


Mângâiere

by Triddlegrl



Series: Lycan Verse [2]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Dom!Blaine, Dom/sub, Dubious Consent, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mpreg, Rape/Non-con References, violance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 08:56:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 40
Words: 456,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triddlegrl/pseuds/Triddlegrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Months ago he was really depressed and Finn made him get this dog. Kurt really doesn't like dogs but this one turned out to be pretty special. The dog ran away and Kurt ran after him, because that's what you do when you love someone and you don't want to lose them. Only he got bit by this werewolf and doesn't remember it, and that dog was actually a wolf too and his name is Blaine. It's his job to bear the bad news that Kurt's life is over, which sucks because he's sort of in love with him. And that's what you missed on Glee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to a short story called Solace. While solace was very fuzzy an intended to be a light read, Mangaiere is decidedly darker. Readers wanted to know what happens for them next, and I've taken the pleasure of expanding Blaine's world and hope to draw the reader into it through Kurt's struggle to adapt. In short, what happens next is not your typical boy gets sparkly supernatural boyfriend brouhaha. I figured learning to be a werewolf would actually be pretty damn difficult. :) So I hope you enjoy but mind the warnings.  
>  **Warnings:** D/s type relationships, graphic violence, minor character death, dub-con, depictions of non-con (not involving Kurt or Blaine)

Kurt Hummel had never met a werewolf before. He’d grown up in Lima Ohio which was certainly not a safe zone for anyone who didn’t fit inside the social parameters for ‘normal’, let alone someone subhuman. He’d learned about them in school, heard all of the theories on mutations and evolution to explain where they had come from. He’d read about them in stories and watched them wreak havoc in movies, but never had he actually met an actual lycan. 

Of course he couldn’t say so for sure. Columbus was a neutral city and statistically speaking he knew realistically that somewhere sometime he’d probably been standing next to one of the illusive creatures, but then again maybe not. If he had, they’d done an excellent job of blending in and appearing to be just like everyone else, just out doing their shopping or heading home from a busy day at work. 

Which was what really bothered him about what he was hearing in the news these days. He was sitting in his parents kitchen nursing a cup of coffee with his stepmother while Finn and his father watched television in the living room. His dad had that days newspaper open on his lap and he’d just finished announcing that the Human Conservationist Party’s (HCP) show and tell bill was moving forward.

“I think it’s smart,” Finn was saying as he sunk further into the couch cushions. “Doesn’t it make you nervous, knowing there are people out there that could snap on you in an instant and you wouldn’t even know it?”

“Finn how long have we both lived in Columbus?” Kurt asked, wandering into the living room as he inquired. “There are lycan’s there, a ton according to the statistics and it’s not like they’re hiding in the sewers so... I don’t know. They can’t be that much different from us. I couldn’t even tell you if I’ve ever met one.”

“Sure but you’ve heard the stories Kurt. They can be really dangerous. We should know who they are, like we do with criminals and sex offenders.”

“Sex offenders? Really Finn,” Kurt scoffed. “Because someone’s born a little different from you they should be treated like some criminal?”

“Finn’s got a point kid,” Kurt’s father Burt interjected gruffly. “I think people have a right to know if they’re living next to someone dangerous. You know I don’t judge a book by its cover but I’d like to be able to know what hand I’ve got before I play it too. I want to know what I’m inviting in my home.”

“Yeah but forcing them to wear some sort of brand, it’s a little too Nazi Germany don’t you think?” Kurt asked, his voice sharper than he’d intended. Discussions like this were hardly outside the normal for his family but Kurt hadn’t been feeling all that well lately and his nerves were a little easier to fray than usual. “Come on dad it’s basic history. They’ve already been dehumanized, marking them only makes it easier for some quack to pick them off because he feels like it.”

“Look Kurt we’re just saying-” Finn began but Kurt didn’t let him finish.

“I hear what you’re just saying alright Finn. I’ve heard what people ‘just say’ about these people my whole life and to be honest it sounds like the same old bullshit people always say when they want the excuse to get rid of what they don’t like. Blacks, jews, gays, lycans what’s the difference?”

“The difference is some gay dude can’t eat me!”

“Yeah but he could kiss you,” Kurt sneered “and to a lot of ignorant assholes that’s just as bad. You know how us predatory gays are!”

“Okay what the hell, Kurt?” Finn thew his hands up and glared at Kurt. “This isn’t even about that and you know it so stop being a dick and-”

“Hey!” Burt shouted between them, bringing both men to a sudden halt. “Knock it off boys. We don’t talk to each other like that. Not in this house. Just drop it.”

“Talk to him.” Finn pouted. “He’s the one freaking out on everybody all the time.”

“I said drop it Finn!”

And so the subject was dropped, but as Kurt angrily gulped his coffee and Finn glared at the carpet as if it had done him some wrong there wasn’t a person in the room who didn’t know that there was something still between them, and that something started and ended with Kurt.

Kurt didn’t  linger too much longer with his family in the living room. He was embarrassed by his earlier behavior but still too caught up in aggravation over what he saw as his loved ones prejudiced views to do anything about it. He didn’t know why the subject of lycans and their treatment seemed to strike such a chord with him.  He had  never even known a lycan but he had known rejection and abuse for his differences and that maybe was why Kurt couldn’t simply let it go.

At least he wished that was the reason. A little closer to the truth was that Kurt might just be angry with his family because he was agitated with everything these days.  He was quick to snap at anything that annoyed him and almost everything he encountered lately he seemed to find annoying. Not that Kurt wasn’t having a bit of a rough month, there were plenty of things that might explain his strange mood. He’d lost his dog one strange night a few weeks back and damn if that hadn’t hurt more than it should have considering he was not much of a dog person and hadn’t wanted the mutt to begin with.

He couldn’t remember much about that night other than the fact that he’d  dangerously walked for hours on his own with obviously no luck at finding his dog and no memory of how he’d made it back home. He’d had a strange bruise on his arm when he’d woken that morning, a big blotchy purple one that he couldn’t remember getting but he figured he must have whacked himself in the dark at some point during his mad search for  Rex. He hadn’t worried on it for long; shortly after that he’d come down with some flue bug and his only worry then had been reaching the toilet and surviving a raging fever. 

Kurt was always irritable when he was sick and being sick for a straight week had made him downright nasty to be around, or so Tina and Finn kept telling him, so he hadn’t really questioned his change in temperament then. Kurt wasn’t sick anymore but he couldn’t say he was well, no he couldn’t say that. He might no longer be puking up his guts but he still sometimes felt fevered, especially at night. His body would flush hot and then cold, his skin breaking out in sweat and pebbling with goose flesh. He sometimes felt apart from it, apart from his own flesh, like he could run out of his own skin if he wanted to; he rather desperately did sometimes.

Sometimes he got headaches. They always came without warning, no pattern to them, but most noticeably when he was in a crowd. A buzzing would start in the back of his head and he’d feel a dull hot pain pulse behind his eyes. Sometimes the thought of food would make him ill, and other times he‘d be so ravenous he’d go through his store in a couple of days. He’d had to replenish his pantry more times in this one month alone than he usually had to do in three.

More recently there was the itching. Not the sort of itch that could be scratched with fingers and nails-though Kurt definitely wouldn’t say no to any that wanted to try- but an itch of the blood. He was quite embarrassingly hornier than he could ever remember being since maybe he was a teenager. Maybe even not then, since Kurt had always been something of  a romantic and a lot more sexually reserved than most boys his age.

He’d walked around with a nearly constant hard on for a couple of days before he decided to do something about it but it hadn’t yet made him feel any better. He’d never been big on casual sex but now he had several dissatisfying one night stands with men whose names and faces weren’t all that firm in his mind under his belt, and the itch for release only seemed to be building. 

Kurt’s family was worried about him. Kurt was worried about himself.

\--------------

Kurt was glad to head back to Columbus after Finn’s birthday weekend, glad to get back to his job and his little house, if only because it meant that he didn’t have to pretend so hard to be okay. He went through his morning routine: wake up, shower, sing to his bird Pavarotti as he dressed, water the plants on his sill, stop by his favorite cafe before heading into the theater. Of course added onto that routine now was an intense jerk off session in his shower to unusual new fantasies of hands that would hold him just the right way-hold him down, pin him so that he was at the mercy of lips and teeth that knew how to bruise.

After that was all taken care of he’d dress, water his plants and go on with his day as if everything were normal. That Monday morning was no different, all part of the new routine. He drove to Brewers that morning still feeling hot and achy despite the extra time in the shower, his fingers clenching and unclenching around his steering wheel as he drove. He wondered if he wasn’t actually really  sick from something. Was there some condition, some illness that completely turned your hormones inside out?  Hormones could effect things like your libido and your appetite right?

Kurt was settling it in his mind to see a doctor, get examined, when he walked into Brewers. He was quickly distracted by a wash of new sounds and smells. The lights seemed to sting his eyes for a moment, the chatter of the morning crowd a little too loud in his ears and the scent of coffee and baking bread was momentarily overpowering. It made his stomach lurch and he could feel the onset of another headache.

He swayed on his feet and might have fallen if a hand had not settled on his back and steadied him.

“Are you alright?” A voice asked kindly, and Kurt habitually nodded the affirmative despite the fact that his head was spinning and he still felt like he might crumple to the floor. He leaned into the strangers touch for a moment, letting the dizziness pass and waited until he thought he was strong enough to stand on his own. When he turned he found a man who looked to be around his own age watching him, intense concern etched on his face.

Since they were paused nearly right in the doorway they were drawing a bit of a crowd as people were forced to squeeze by them to enter or exit. Flushing with embarrassment Kurt moved away from the door and away from the kind (and admittedly handsome) strangers hands.

“I’m fine, thank you,” he assured the guy with a warm smile, not quite wanting to brush him off just yet. He didn’t know what it was about him (Kurt wasn’t unused to attractive men) but he found his eyes lingering on him. 

“You sure?” The guy asked, and Kurt’s heart slammed in his chest so suddenly he couldn’t hold in a small gasp. He felt a now all too familiar flush of heat, a tingling across his skin that made him feel edgy and restless. He knew without a doubt he  wanted the slightly shorter man standing in front of him, just like he’d known (and had) all of the others. 

He’d seen plenty of good looking men in his life. He’d spent the last week or so practically thinking of nothing else so there should be nothing special about this guy but there undeniably was. 

The thing was this guy smelled good, like, really really good. Whatever cologne he was wearing it was strong, not overwhelmingly so but strong enough that Kurt couldn’t miss it if he tried. It didn’t smell anything like the usual scents guys wore; Kurt couldn’t even say what it was exactly he was smelling but it was something sweet and natural, not exactly floral but not quite musky either. 

Whatever it was, it was good, so good in fact that Kurt found himself unconsciously moving closer to better draw him in. Add on top of that an charmingly unruly head of black curls and a pair of pretty eyes framed by a set of gorgeous lashes (he was insanely jealous of) and Kurt quickly had a problem on his hands. Smiling awkwardly he tried to shift his carrier bag to shield himself as discreetly as possible.

He sincerely hoped he could manage to keep it together long enough to get the guys number. He’d call him when he was normal again and not in danger of either snapping his head off over some little thing or laying himself out over the nearest hard surface and subjecting him to a live play of one of his sick fantasies.

“Completely,” Kurt lied, smiling again. The strangers eyes followed the movement of his lips and Kurt’s smile deepened as he felt something stir deep in his belly. This had happened with the others too. He’d felt the charge between them as if it were something he could physically grasp. Then, like now, his body relaxed into something warm and sensual even as it tightened with urgency. “Am I robbing you of the chance to play hero?” he asked, smile turning flirtatious on his lips as he watched the stranger through lowered lashes.

“Not necessarily,” the man said with a small grin of his own. “Maybe I should stick around in case you get dizzy again?”

Kurt arched a brow, smile turning smug and challenging despite how weak the other man’s smile seemed to be making his knees. The man’s eyes seemed to be brighter, more intense now, and Kurt knew without knowing how he knew that the stranger knew exactly what effect he was having on him. Perhaps the same way Kurt knew the effect he was having on  him . It was the scent he thought to himself in a bit of a daze, the stronger it got the more certain he became that if he crooked his finger this man would follow him, if he ran this man would chase.

A shiver went up his spine and had Kurt not been so caught up with his filtration he would have wondered why that prospect seemed to thrill him as much as it did. Instead he crossed his arms- broad shoulders braced, arms flexed, muscles coiled and ready to spring into action,  wanting action- smile turning aloof. 

“Nice of you to offer,” he murmured. “Fortunately I don’t think I’ll be repeating that performance so you won’t be bothered.”

“Now what makes you think it would bother me?”

“Hanging around some guy you don’t know so that he doesn’t faint into a crowd of early morning coffee addicts?” Kurt asked with hint of a sneer, turning to snag a place in line. “Most people would find that inconvenient. Unless of course you want to hit on him, which of course you do, so I guess you’re right.”

Kurt heard the guy laugh under his breath behind him before he felt the tickle that same breath made against his ear as the stranger replied, “Someone’s pretty confident of their charms.”

“Not really, I just know when some guy is tripping all over himself to come onto me.” Kurt quipped without turning around and the guy laughed again. “Stop staring at my ass.” Kurt knew he was, he could feel his gaze burning into his back.

“Sorry,” the guy apologized sounding anything but and Kurt bit back a grin.

“Liar,” he whispered and somehow it didn’t surprise him when the man chuckled as if he had heard him clearly.

“It’s Blaine by the way.”

“Hi, Blaine.” Kurt really liked the way the name rolled off his tongue.

“Don’t you have a name?”

“Yes, I do,” Kurt murmured again, stepping up to the counter as the guy in front of him moved. “Hey Jane, the usual.”

“How are you, Kurt?” The perky brunette barista asked as he slipped a five across the counter. Kurt grimaced as he answered, “better, still kind of under the weather.”

“You’ll feel better in a few days,” Blaine said and something about the way he said it made Kurt turn around. He’d said it too certain, like he really  knew .

“Really? How do you know that?” Kurt asked skeptically and Blaine shrugged.

“Lucky guess. Anyway. I hope you do, feel better that is,” Blaine said with the same sincerity, the utter seriousness that made Kurt think he wasn’t just  saying  things to say them. His chest glowed with warmth as he smiled again.

“Thank you,” he murmured. “That’s sweet. But you’re not off the hook for staring at my ass.”

“You’re really going to hold that against me?” Blaine asked as Jane slid Kurt’s finished drink across the counter. Kurt was snickering as he picked up the beverage. Blaine’s answering grin was positively wolfish and it was doing wonderful things for Kurt.

“Yes,” Kurt teased. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to behave like an animal?”

Blaine outright laughed at this, full on crinkles and laughter lines, and Kurt found the sound of it more pleasing than he probably had a right to.

“Kurt...” Blaine said his name with such fondness, such warm regard that Kurt felt as if he were speaking to someone who had known him for ages, someone who had spent a lot of time missing him. “You really have no idea.”

It was strange really, Kurt thought to himself as the two stood smiling softly at each other. He didn’t feel so off balance anymore. He felt as if he’d come home from a long whirlwind journey, settled into a familiar space. Talking to Blaine was like reaching for the hand of an old friend. 

He found himself blushing for reasons he couldn’t piece together and when Blaine stepped closer his breath caught. He tilted his head, baring the pale flesh of his neck as if offering it up. He didn’t know why he did; he just did. The responding flare of heat he saw in Blaine’s eyes made him shiver. It also scared him. The intensity of his own feelings, the strange urges he was having, they were too strong, too strange and new not to terrify him a little.

“Jane,” Kurt prompted, stepping away from the counter and Blaine, turning to the girl who watched them with undisguised fascination. “Can I see that sharpe?”

As soon as the girl had handed off the writing utensil Kurt turned to Blaine and pulled him in by the collar, grinning at the other mans startled look. Grabbing his arm Kurt quickly scrawled his number.

“I need to get to work and didn’t really have time for you to get around to asking,” he explained as he handed Jane back the sharpe. He patted Blaine’s shoulder as he slid past him and headed for the door. “Have a good day, Blaine,” Kurt called over his shoulder as he exited. He didn’t need to look to know that Blaine watched him the entire way.

Kurt Hummel grinned like a cat savoring cream as he left Brewers. He didn’t know it but Blaine wasn’t the only one who couldn’t pull his eyes off him as he departed. 

Just a few feet away from Blaine a middle aged man in a business suit stared intently at the swinging door Kurt had just left through. The sight and smell of his obvious interest set Blaine’s teeth on edge. He bared them in the man’s direction, barely containing a growl. The man was lycan, that much Blaine knew, so he had no doubt his message was received growl or no growl.

The guy frowned, nostrils flaring as he took stock of Blaine, only for his eyes to widen as he recognized the scent of an alpha-major. Blaine was used to the surprise on other lycan’s faces when they realized he was an pack alpha. It wasn’t just the age, he was well aware that he didn’t look the part. He’d been the runt of his parents brood and the smallest of all his brothers. It had been all the more reason for him to learn how to fight and win.

“You won’t follow him. You won’t even speak to him,” Blaine ordered the unfamiliar wolf. Blaine wasn’t his alpha so the guy didn’t have to listen of course but he’d know that if he disobeyed that Blaine would regard it as a challenge, and a direct challenge to an alpha-major usually resulted in a fight that either ended in death or something close to it.

The guy bowed his head in a curt show of submission and it was enough to satisfy Blaine.

“You can’t blame a guy for looking. Beta’s are rare, and that one is...” the guy trailed off as Blaine flashed his teeth at him again this time letting a low growl slip.

“That one is nothing to you. Understood?”

“Got you loud and clear. That one is claimed,” the guy reassured him, quickly lifting his hands in a placating gesture. “But with all due respect kid, he’s itching like a bitch in heat and there isn’t a lycan with any sense who won’t smell that and come running. Guys like me might not risk fighting you for him but you’re not the only alpha-major passing through this town. I’d get on with it if you want to keep him.”

“Don’t you worry about it,” Blaine snapped glaring until the alpha-minor ducked his head into submission. 

He was worrying about that enough for the both of them. 


	2. A Sign of Changes

It was a Tuesday night and Kurt wasn’t drunk. Kurt didn’t normally get drunk on weeknights in any case but he’d have liked to have that excuse to explain what he was doing now. What he had tried to do after work was what he did after every night of work (every night since the dog ran away was more correct). Every night since he’d lost Rex (sans that week of flu from hell) he added going around the city and replacing any of the lost dog signs that had gotten torn down and a stop at the Tail and Paw pet rescue to his evening itinerary.

He was well aware of the fact that his friends thought he’d cracked. It did surprise him on some level that for all his grumbling about getting a dog in the first place, that the mutt had lived up to the whole ‘mans best friend’ trope so well that he simply couldn’t give up hope that he’d find him someday.

Once he was home Kurt would usually make dinner (if it was a day his stomach wanted to handle it) and drown his disappointment in a glass of wine (just the one) and afterwards move his sad party to the couch in order to fall asleep in a movie; all the while trying not to think about how much was wrong with his life. Thrown in there the last couple of days was anticipating a phone call that never came and trying not to think about sex. He was determined not to indulge in any more meaningless one night stands. That had just never been his thing before and he didn’t want it to be now just because something was wrong.

Maybe this was clinical depression. That could affect a person's appetite right? That could make a person do things they wouldn’t normally do, right?

Whatever it was Kurt spent the weekend thinking of cute strangers with hazel eyes and ridiculously defined arms beneath his hands and wetting his sheets from vivid dreams of men with shadowy faces doing things to his body that should probably shame him and most certainly frighten him.... only they didn’t. Not really. If he was honest when he woke in the middle of the night covered in sweat and drying come he had to grit his teeth and clench the bedsheets to keep himself from leaping up and.... and what?

Kurt had never been this restless before, truly he felt like a pot about to boil, and no matter how much extra work he took on for the company or what else he did he always felt the insatiable urge to drop everything he was doing and just....

He just wanted to run out of his skin, run out into the street butt naked if he had to and run and run and never stop.

When Kurt walked out his door that Tuesday night he was still dressed in the clothes he’d worn to work: California wash skinnies, fabulous black leather ankle boots (courtesy of Ralph Lauren), classic white dress shirt topped off by a double breasted red cardigan jacket that proudly promoted his chest and shoulders. The thing was that that day, and all of the days before it since he’d met Blaine, he’d dressed in the hopes that if Blaine wasn’t keen on calling that he’d at least run into him again during his morning stop at Brewers.

After spending the weekend trying not to think about Blaine and getting not a lick of rest Monday night because of an attack of raging headache and achy bones, to say that Kurt’s nerves were fried was an understatement. He’d been determined but when he fell into exhausted sleep on the couch practically in his dinner plate and had a vivid dream in which Blaine showed up and fucked him in ways that would make a porn star proud, Kurt had woken with a painful hard on that no amount of tugging on his dick and fingering himself would ease.

When Kurt left the house that evening he hadn’t bothered changing, he hadn’t bothered combing the hair he’d made wild thrashing on the couch, and his gate as he strode up to the bar could be called nothing less than a prowl. What he was prowling for wasn’t at all specific. Something to hit quite possibly; he was so edgy from frustration and exhaustion he’d have gladly hit someone at the slightest provocation. What he’d found was better. He’d walked into that familiar bar (a place he and some of the other company members sometimes frequented after tough rehearsals or the end of a good run) and ordered a drink from a familiar face that greeted him with idle words that he’d never remember come morning.

He’d sat there slowly sucking down the liquid nectar of alcohol, drumming his fingers on the wood surface of the bar as the heavy scents of liquor and sweat mixed in his nose and made it twitch. He didn’t think about the fact that he could smell the people in the relatively uncrowded bar, he didn’t think about the growing buzz in his ears, the itching of his skin, or the shivers going down his spine. He just drummed his fingers and swallowed mouthful after mouthful of drink using the taste to anchor him to his physical body as he waited on a knife's point for some unnamable something to happen.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

Six simple words; the catalyst for a broken oath and a morning after that was going to be spent in tears, but it wasn’t the morning after yet. It was Tuesday night and he certainly wasn’t drunk when he’d brought this stranger into his home and undone the layers of clothing that had begun to feel as if they were suffocating him.

He was burning up from the inside out and the strangers hands only fed the fire, his skin hot and slick with sweat on top of Kurt as his hands grappled for leverage to deepen the thrust of his hips. Kurt dug his fingers into back muscles that quivered with strain, his nails raking punishing lines across smooth flesh for each second his cry for more and harder was ignored. He tried, Kurt’s helpful stranger, he panted with the exertion of his effort and each forceful stroke against his prostate sent sparks off behind Kurt’s eyes but it only made the need worse, so bad that he begged.

“Fuck... please just... please...” Kurt arched upward trying to force everything deeper, trying to shatter the bars around that wild thing inside of him and splinter apart with all of the brilliance and ferocity of a supernova but he was no where close and it hurt. “ I need I need... of fuck please!”

He all but cried when he felt the stranger come inside of him hot and wet and over too quickly. With a snarl Kurt pushed his slackening body off and away, quickly situating himself between the strangers legs and taking his softened cock in hand.

“Hey hey slow ah...” he’d hissed with oversensitivity as Kurt greedily swallowed the head of his cock. He didn’t take note of the taste but he was all too aware of the warmth and weight and the need for more. He wanted hands pulling on his hair and that delicious flutter at the back of his throat, that burn of too much too thick too fast but just right.

He settled for hardness and as soon as the body beneath him was hard again, writhing on the bed with the effort not to abandon restraint and fuck into his mouth, Kurt let his cock fall from his mouth with a wet pop, ignoring everything but his goal to position himself above the strangers waist and line him up with the hole that was still open and slick with his come.

‘Like this’ he instructed with his body as he dropped down. It hurt, too much too fast, but it was so much better; not quite perfect but better.

“God you’re-ah fuck!” The stranger cried out as Kurt dove forward and bit his shoulder. He’d never bitten anyone in his life and yet he bit this man, holding on to his flesh tight enough to taste the salty tang of his sweat slicked skin mix with the slightest hint of copper. He couldn’t say why he did it but the man froze beneath him, body splayed out beneath his in total submission. His eyes were wide with the knowledge that he was at Kurt’s mercy and instinctive fear was creeping into them. Kurt could smell it on him, it added an edge to the desire that made him growl again. He released the man’s shoulder, licking the teeth marks and vivid bruising he left behind and realigning the mans cock with his ass. He was gratified to find that fear or no his stranger was still hard.

He was docile beneath Kurt- not what he wanted- he’d let Kurt take whatever he needed- this man didn’t have it. So Kurt would take control and take from this man whatever meager relief his body could supply. He would just have to settle for that.  
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

When Kurt woke Wednesday morning it was to the feel of movement and the sound of a painful hiss close to his ear. His eyes snapped open, his mind racing to make sense of the rush of scents and sounds as he blinked sleepiness out of his eyes. He was at home he knew and there was a stranger in his bed. It was the stranger who had woken him; attempting to crawl out of bed unnoticed he looked to be having a hard time moving and as Kurt’s vision finally came into focus he could see why.

At the sound of his gasp the man jerked in surprise and twisted to look back at him, making the vivid pattern of bruises and scratch marks painting his torso all the more pronounced. Kurt stared in horror at him for a moment, unable to comprehend that his hands and teeth were responsible for such damage, and then quite without warning tears were sliding hot and soundlessly down his cheeks. What was happening to him?

“Are you crying?” The stranger asked and Kurt quickly wiped the tears away, embarrassment on top of his shame wriggling uncomfortably in his gut.

“I hurt you didn’t I? Oh my god....”

The longer Kurt looked at him the less he could believe what he was seeing and the more he felt like crying again. To all appearances he’d lured a stranger into his bed and then proceeded to assault him.

“Did you ask me to stop?” Kurt couldn’t believe that someone wouldn’t, he didn’t recall hearing any protests the night before but the thing about that was the night before was lost in a haze of burning need and the only thing he remembered all that clearly about it was a lingering sense of crippling dissatisfaction. His stomach lurched and he gripped the bed sheets tightly, fighting not to be sick as he panted through a wave of nausea. “Oh my god oh my god ohmygod-”

“Hey,hey, ouch...” the stranger hissed again as he moved too quickly to lay a hand on Kurt’s shoulder. “Relax man. You think this is my first lylay?”

Lylay? Something about the word sparked in Kurt’s memory.

“You were by far the best though,” the guy kept going on. “I’ve never been able to catch one of you guys this close to the full moon.”

Kurt pulled his head up to glare at the stranger, noting his blunt nose but otherwise typically handsome features, and asked, “You think I’m lycan?”

Because the only way for this to be a lylay was for this stranger to be one of those men and women who went after lycans for their reputed stamina (attracted to their mystery and ferocity it was some sort of notch on the bedpost to find one and let them fuck you before the full moon) and for Kurt to be the prized lycan.

“Aren’t you?” His still anonymous lay snorted. “I mean you sure fucked me like one so...”

“Get out.” It was rude, inconsiderate even considering how roughly Kurt had treated him the night before, but suddenly Kurt could no longer bear talking to this man. Everything was so messed up and the last thing he wanted to deal with was some frat boy who got his kicks out of letting lycans maul him.

“Hey it’s cool man,” the guy threw up his hands in a placating gesture. “You’re not out or whatever but it’s a neutral city. What are you so afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” Kurt snapped. He threw off the bed covers and swung himself out of bed, searching determinedly for the mans clothes and flinging them into his lap as he found them. “I’m not lycan and that’s really lucky for you.” Snatching up the last article of clothing he could see that wasn’t his own he tossed it back at the man and glared. “You know people die doing what you do? What if I was? What if I’d killed you?!”

“Don’t yell at me. You’re the one with the teeth and claws. You guys keep insisting you’re not killers so what’s the problem?” The guy sneered, not taking well to Kurt’s judgmental tone. He hastened to get back into his pants, wincing visibly as he moved, and cursed when he finally straightened to pull them up around his hips. “Fuck I think you sprained my cock. How is your ass not on fire?”

Kurt flushed. He was a little sore, but nowhere near as sore as he should have been after the way he remembered trying to fuck himself on this stranger. Nowhere near as sore as you want to be. The thought came unbidden and he growled. Balling his fists Kurt shook his head and marched for his bedroom door.

“Goodbye. I’m glad you got whatever thrill you were looking for but I’m really not what you think I am.” He swung the door open and held it open for the stranger to exist, hopefully as quickly as he had entered. “I need you to go.”  
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Allie Hayes had lived in Annehurst Village of Westerville Ohio all of her life. To the unsuspecting eye there was nothing to separate her subdivision from any other in Westerville. It was a wealthy town as far as towns in central Ohio went and Annehurst looked like all of the other subdivisions that helped make it up, complete with comfortable houses surrounded by lofty lawns. Annehurst sat sandwiched between two public parks, one of the little league variety and the other an 800 acre expanse of woods and open fields surrounding a pretty lake.

At the southeast end of Shrock Lake there was a private estate.The millionaire family that owned it kept it well protected and the residents of Annehurst knew better than to attempt to get on the grounds without permission (not seriously anyway). Many of the the local teenagers had dared each other over the years but none of them had ever succeeded in the game and none of them really wanted to. They didn’t want to because while Annehurst might appear like any other community on the surface- with its little library and country club- it wasn’t a normal community at all.

Westerville boasted one of the largest safe zones for subhuman persons in all of central Ohio. Safe zones were subhuman reservations, nations within a nation: subhuman owned, subhuman run and ruled by subhuman law- humans enter purely at your own risk.The woods boarding Annhurst village were the start of that zone and that was why the people who populated the subdivision of Annehurst were mostly lycan themselves. No normal human being would choose to live right on the doorstep of such a large lycan zone.

Allie had lived in Annehurst for sixty two years and in all that time there had always been an Anderson alpha. Julias Anderson had built the estate on Shrock Lake in 1773. He’d defended the land against hunters and his son had done the same after him until the territory was declared a lycan reservation in 1826. Always it had been Anderson land, always the Anderson men and women had fought to preserve the lycans that called it home, but this year had been different.

This year their Alpha, the last living Anderson male, had been serving punishment for breaking the laws of the guild. He’d left the pack leaderless and unprotected for the fist time in hundreds of years. Allie was not one of the ones who blamed Blaine. Blaine was her sister’s son and she’d all but raised him and his siblings after their mother died and their father couldn’t be bothered with them.

She of all people understood the young alphas decision to go against guild law and terminate the rogue wolf who had arranged the brutal murder of one of their own (as well as that of the human hunter he’d duped into helping him). Everyone had seen how his perceived failure as a leader had haunted Blaine. She’d known that as horrific as it was for any of them to feel the pain of Sally’s family screaming across the pack bond that it could only be a hundred times worse for Blaine who had to bear the weight of their collective pain and the outcry for justice. He was so young, too young sometimes, and Allie had always been of the opinion that he was asked to bear far too much.

He’d been so very busy since his return, spreading himself thin trying to settle the hundred or so problems that had popped up during his absence and to silence the naysayers (whose grumbles at his youth and unreliability as a leader had all but turned into a roar with a year to fester). It didn’t help that he seemed distracted, often distant even in the midst of pack communal hours and prone to disappearing for long hours. Sometimes he took Wes with him and other times he left his beta in charge.This particular excursion to god knows where Blaine had taken Wes with him. They’d been gone a full two days and Allie had the unfortunate responsibility of bearing nothing but bad news when they returned.

That Wednesday morning the fact that Clara had not arrived yet with Cal was bad news indeed.

Clara and Calvin O’Brennan were twins, something rare for lycans, but even rarer these days they were both likely beta wolves. There was no telling yet, as they were not old enough yet for their trials, but the signs were usually distinct even in cubs. Allie hadn’t made it this long as a den mother without having an eye for these things.

Allie’s mouth pulled down in a frown, her brown eyes glancing again towards the long row of windows that lined the kitchen of Anderson House. The richly appointed dormitories of Anderson House like its counterpart Shield House were all a part of the grounds that made up the prestigious boarding school of Dalton, the facilities of which were perched at the very edge of the south end of the forest. Dalton was the only privately funded institution built in a government protected safe zone specifically for lycan children. That meant that it was also one of few places in the world where a lycan child could grow in safety. So indeed they came from all over, sent by parents who knew they had a better chance for survival at Dalton on the front steps of Pack Westerville than anywhere else.

Allie had been a den mother for the school since before Blaine was even old enough to attend it. She’d met with him a time or two just like this- in the kitchen while she oversaw the making of breakfast when no one but the cook was up and about yet- more times than she could count, and well she knew what the twisted up feeling in her gut meant. Trouble.

No sooner had she thought it then the door to the kitchen burst open and the panting chattering mess that was Clara O’Brennan swept inside.

“Miss Allie, I tried to stop him really I did! But you know Cal when he wants something, the thick head won’t listen. Really it isn’t my fault I-”

“Calm down Clara.” Allie left Emmaline at the stove to finish the rest of breakfast and quickly made her way over to the skinny girl with too pale skin and carroty hair that stood trembling in the doorway. Clara didn’t have the strongest constitution of all the cubs in her care, an obvious sub despite her stubbornness and outgoing nature. She hated to disappoint authority and would work herself into hysterics if someone let her. “Now tell me slowly. Where is Cal?”

“With Smythe and his lot,” Clara replied with a sniff, her pert nose wrinkling with distaste as she spoke. “He’s got something in his nose over Sebastian and he won’t see sense. I told him that Smythe was dangerous but he just told me I was worrying over nothing.”

Well that really was bad news. Allie patted the girl’s shoulder comfortingly, trying her best to keep her calm.

Calvin was the older and bolder of the twins, his presence usually all that was required to ease his sisters fears. His instincts were a lot harder to pin down and order into neat boxes. He showed all the signs of one day growing into a beautiful and obedient submissive but among his peers and especially when relating to his sister he had shown equally strong signs of dominance. That was not so unusual in betas, and truly Calvin was a loving protector to his sister, but Cal’s precocious nature had also landed him in trouble a time or two before. This time he was playing a very dangerous game, a game that could have disastrous consequences for the entire pack.

“He’s a twelve year old boy,” Allie reminded herself as much as Clara. “A rogue like Sebastian Smythe would seem terribly fascinating to him.”

“I don’t like him!” Clara declared, voicing Allie’s own sentiments. “He’s an alpha and he hasn’t sworn allegiance to Blaine so why don’t Wes and the others just run him off?”

“Because while the Anderson’s might have claimed Westerville as their territory it’s still a public domain. Sebastian and those that follow him haven’t broken any laws and they haven’t bothered us,” Allie reminded her. “And until they do we have no cause or right to run them out of Westerville.”

That was the whole problem really. Clara wasn’t wrong to worry. No alpha in his right mind brought his pack this close to another pack and camped on their doorstep for this long, not without invitation. When Sebastian Smythe had arrived six months ago everyone had known that a territory war was imminent. While this was far from their packs first it was the first time in history when the threat had come when they were leaderless and weak.

“But he shouldn’t be this close,” Clara insisted with a pout. “Blaine should chase Smythe away. Shouldn’t he Miss Allie?”

“I don’t know pup he...” Allie trailed off, her attention pulled from the young girl at her side to the sudden rush of tingles that shot down her spine and into her toes. Her heart started to pick up pace, filling her body with a familiar sudden heat. She did not have to turn at the sound of Emmaline’s relieved sigh to know that she had felt the same. Clara had not, but then again Clara was underage and not yet sworn to the pack.

“What’s wrong Miss Allie?” The girl asked fearfully and Allie’s face split into a broad grin.

“It’s not what’s wrong. It’s what is right again.”

“Blaine is back?!” The girl guessed excitedly. She barely paused a moment before hurling herself through the kitchen door. Despite her own excitement Allie still found a moment to roll her eyes at the child. Clara would throw herself through fire to get to Blaine. Almost everyone knew that Clara O’Brennan wanted nothing more than to be Blaine’s mate someday. It wasn’t to be for many reasons, the most obvious being her sex. If either of the twins was allowed to stay with the pack it would be Cal.

But Allie’s thoughts did not stay on pack politics and girlish crushes for long. Every instinct she had was pulling her towards the front of campus. Her heart rate remained elevated, her body continued to flush with warmth and strength that in the hard year behind them she at times had almost forgotten the feel of. A pack without an alpha was weak, easy pickings for a cunning wolf like Sebastian Smythe because they were not at full strength. They were confused and disoriented, craving the sense of purpose that only came from having an alpha.

And there he was standing with Wes in front of the gate, already surrounded by a crowd of students and teachers, and Allie could smell the others- who would have dropped what they were doing in town if they could- coming steadily towards them. It was always like this when the alpha-major returned from a trip away, each wolf seeking to greet him and reconnect, but it was especially so for pack Westerville after going so long without a leader. Blaine really should not be leaving so much. Allie knew he wouldn’t without good reason but still she worried. Fear and dissatisfaction were the beds where ambitious alphas like Sebastian loved to sow their seeds.

Clara elbowed her way through the crowd and threw herself around Blaine, her whole body quivering with excitement. Blaine pretended to stagger back several steps, smiling fondly down at the girl who kept her arms twined around him like a weed.

“Well it’s good to see you too Clara.” Aliie heard him say over the voices of the others. “Where’s Cal?”

“Sniffing after that rogue Sebastian!” Clara informed him heatedly. Blaine looked to Wes, his eyes narrowed with something unreadable but Allie knew her nephews tells well enough to piece together that he was not pleased by this news.

“Cal’s been running you ragged I’ll take it aunt Allie?” Blaine asked, detangling himself from Clara who wisely made room for Allie as the older woman wrapped the slightly taller man up in a fierce hug.

“A hormonal preteen on the verge of majority? Of course he is.”Allie squeezed Blaine tightly, taking in his scent and the feel of his body beneath her hands. His solidity was such a comfort after days of feeling adrift. It was the most unsettling thing, reaching for the comfort of your alpha only to find continuous emptiness.

“That’s right he’s twelve now,” Blaine mused distractedly. “Next year he’ll take a master.”

“Our little Cal thinks he’s ready for one now. He’s quite taken with Sebastian I’m afraid,” Emmaline, a soft spoken omega, piped up from next to Wes. Allie didn’t miss the hand Wes placed on the petite blonds back, gentle yet firm. The two had not begun an open courtship but Allie didn’t miss much that went on with the pack and she knew it was only a matter of time. Wes always had been a smart cookie and Emmaline was one of those rare women who emulated everything storybook princesses were made of. Sickeningly lovely from the inside out the poor dear. Blaine had to keep the girl under lock and key to keep the other alphas away from her.

“But you’re going to be Cal’s master aren’t you Blaine?” Clara asked as Blaine began to stride up the lawn towards the steps of the Great Hall. “I know because I told mama I wanted to be your protege and she said not to get my hopes up because papa wants me home with the pack.” Blaine and Allie shared a look of amusement before turning what were hopefully sympathetic smiles on the girl.

The Alpha’s of pack Dublin were just one of the many alpha families that had entrusted their children to Dalton for their safety. Not unlike other youth their age lycan children had to deal with a lot of unexpected changes at the onset of puberty. The sudden change in their hormones triggered new instincts they did not yet know how to control. The most important change was the ability to shift their shape at will without the aid of an adult.

Lycan children took masters between the ages of twelve and fourteen at the cusp of these changes.The age of majority- when they could be trusted on their own without the guidance of a master- was twenty. The bond between master and protege was deep and intense, something not easily severed if ever, so it was ideal for a cub to foster with a master in the pack they planned on eventually aligning themselves with. Ideally that should be the pack of their birth but with so much danger to lycan children and the need for many parents to send their children away that couldn’t always be arranged.

A lot of times it was a political thing. Calvin and Clara were alpha O’Brennan’s youngest, not needed or expected to inherit positions of authority within their own pack. There was also the growing certainty that they were both betas, something valuable to every pack, which made them useful in many ways. Packs with betas were stronger simply because alphas with beta mates were strongest. Therefore Clara would go home to foster despite the danger to her in Ireland (which was still a hundred percent hostile against their kind) because she was female and as soon as she was of mating age every alpha hopeful who got a whiff of her would come courting. She would mate someone important in the pack of her birth and likely bear strong alphas and hopefully more betas.

Cal on the other hand was male and gay, a gay beta which was probably the rarest thing of them all. Anyone with a brain knew that such a lycan was perfect for someone like Blaine. An alpha, and not just any alpha but a gay alpha whose prospects of finding a mate were already grim if he hoped to find someone he didn’t have to train into submission against their nature.

No one knew why over the years there had been distressingly less and less betas born but because of the increasing scarcity of them alphas tended to mate with other alphas. An alpha needed a strong mate so an omega would never do, but alphas unlike betas and omegas all tended to be dominants. That created friction in a mated pair at best and an outright battle at the worst. It was alright for alpha-minors who could settle the battle for dominance between themselves without too much impact on the rest of the pack.

Not so for the alpha-major. The dominance instinct in lycans had only grown stronger with the increase of alphas and it was especially so in the alpha-major. With more competition every day, as pack leader the alpha-major have to be chief dominant. Blaine could no more change that than he could change his birth. The alpha-major needed total submission from their mate and for so many alphas these days that meant putting their mates through a brutal sort of training that went against their nature. It was necessary for all that it was terrible and many alpha pairs underwent it with love, but if it could be avoided they would jump at the chance to do so.

Many chose to do so by taking omegas for mates. It made a certain sort of sense, for they were at the other end of the spectrum with almost every single one being smaller, naturally docile, and of submissive instinct. It worked well for many but it wasn’t the best solution. Leading a pack required a certain aggressiveness that omegas just didn’t have and amidst frequent territory wars and the trials of human persecution an alpha needed a mate to match him in aggression. That was why betas were so coveted. Betas could be as aggressive as alphas no matter what their natural instinct and they were wholly unique in their ability to switch between the instinct to dominate and the instinct to submit (though many leaned strongly one way or the other).

Pack Westerville had a strong collection of betas, Wes at the top of the pecking order. If Blaine were straight- as were most lycans- he’d probably have taken one of the females to mate by now. Allie had known the moment Calvin O’Brennan showed up on the steps of Dalton for placement that William O’Brennan had hopes that Blaine would offer to foster Cal when it came that time. All you had to have was two wits to rub together to figure that one out. She also knew that Blaine was resisting the idea, that he found the idea of even trying to think of a mere child that way distasteful. Of course if anything were ever to happen between the two it would be when Cal was much older but still it was all so... planned, so set up, and Blaine no matter how much he grumbled to the contrary was a hopeless romantic. He didn’t like the idea of an arranged union even if Calvin was (practically speaking) his best chance at finding the perfect mate.

“You and Cal are still young yet for fostering,” Blaine reminded them all as they swept inside the doors of the Great Hall. Allie watched him take in the familiar sights of the place that had been more a home to him than Anderson Manor had ever been as he offered, “how about we worry about that down the road?”

The lights that hung from the ceiling seemed to glow brighter at his presence. Allie felt the warmth that rushed through her veins and she knew by the howls that went up from the others still collecting outside that it was passing through them as well. They were complete again.

“Welcome home dear. Headmaster Strand would like a word with you,” she whispered into his ear, squeezing his arm again.

“Good,” Blaine nodded. “I have something to discuss with the both of you. Would you have something to eat prepared? We didn’t have time to stop on the road.”

Allie nodded, wondering at the trepidation she saw in Blaine’s gaze as she gestured for Emmaline to follow her. Blaine usually wanted something warm to drink when he met with the headmaster and they had much to discuss that she feared would not go well. Maybe some hot coco would do them all well.


	3. The Alpha, The Headmaster &  Trouble With Courtship.

Harvey Strand had been headmaster of Dalton Academy for going on fifty years. He’d gone to school there himself with Blaine’s grandfather, been a teacher there when Blaine’s father walked the halls and had sat in this very office whenever Blaine and his friends were ushered in for discipline after some misdeed.

Things were different now. Blaine was a man in every way that counted, his stature bigger, taller, and far more imposing than when he’d been a skinny boy with a mop head of hair squirming nervously in the chair opposite his headmaster. Blaine paced in front of the window behind Harvey’s desk while Harvey sat and watched, chair aligned to face him. Allie Hayes sat in the chair across his desk watching their alpha with quiet concentration and Wes stood with a hip braced against her chair, an air of amusement about him that Harvey knew from experience could only herald bad tidings.

“Has Calvin been located yet?” Their alpha asked suddenly, as if thoughts of the boy hadn’t been the very thing driving him to pace for the last twenty minutes.

“Yes, he showed up shortly after you arrived. David’s dealing with him now,” Harvey replied, tapping his fingers idly on the wood of his desk. 

“I’ll need you to keep a more vigilant eye on him headmaster. O’Brennan would have my balls if I let something happen to his son.” Blaine turned to pin Harvey with an insistent stare. Harvey felt the press of dominance and did not resist the urge to nod his head submissively. He knew in that regard he’d failed Blaine. At this sign of understanding Blaine’s features softened and he reached out a hand to trail over Harvey’s back as he continued his pacing. “Don’t go too hard on him. At this age I’m sure he’s having all sorts of new urges he wants to explore. Smythe would know and he’ll take full advantage of that. It’s been confirmed of course that Cal would be of interest to him and not Clara?”

“Oh yes,” Wes responded with an inelegant snort. “If even half of Sebastian Smythe’s reputation has any validity Calvin is definitely the one he wants.”

“But we do not know that his intentions are to steal a beta,” Harvey reminded them all and Blaine pinched the bridge of his nose as if he were trying to stave off a headache. But Harvey could not let Blaine ignore what was staring them all in the face. He didn’t know what had Blaine so distracted lately but disaster was perched on their very doorstep and he simply must pay heed to it. 

“Yes beta wolves are valuable to us and would interest him but there are other betas elsewhere and Cal will not be of mating age for some time. Smythe can’t have came across the sea just to steal a child.”

“No, but I would cross a sea to steal a pack,” Allie pointed out with a barely suppressed growl. Harvey passed her a grateful smile and she nodded adding, “Wes can tell you. It was a nightmare for David and the others patrolling our borders once word of your imprisonment got out Blaine. Westerville might not have the largest pack in the nation but we have something no other pack has.”

“Dalton: land protected by lycan  and  human law, safeguarded by wizard magic. The only place like it in the world,” Blaine filled in without further prompting. “This forest is a gold mine. Wherelse  would parents of every pack feel safe to send their children? They trust us to train them without bias and release them back into their care. We’ve kept that trust.”

“Westerville has always been a powerful pack for this reason and always an Anderson has been at its head,” Harvey joined in, rising from his seat and looking towards the rows of books on his shelf that contained the long history of their pack. “But things are not as they once were. Your father changed things Blaine. He shattered centuries of built up trust and while no one doubts your valor, you are young yet to be an alpha-major. Too young some say and your recent actions have only added fuel to their fire.”

“Funny how people like to talk.” Allie growled, swatting at the invisible pests who dared to speak out against her nephew.“What did they do when Julias went back on his oaths? What did they do for their children when he would have destroyed them and this entire pack? Nothing! They left in the hands of a child what they wouldn’t do, and now they want to talk?”

“He’s right aunt Allie,” Blaine interjected, ignoring the woman’s indignant scoff. “I let the unthinkable happen.”

“Oh, Blaine, pup, you did what was right.” Allie insisted. She cringed back as Blaine raised his voice, the sound of it battering at the mental shields of those in the room and demanding submission.

“My only job is to do what is right for this pack and no, Aunt Allie, I haven’t done that!” At the pain he could see on his friends faces Blaine struggled to wrest his still unpredictable temper back into control. “I acted the young fool so they have every right to call me on it. I’ve put the pack in jeopardy for my own personal satisfaction and those are not the actions of a leader.”

“And yet you do lead us Blaine,” Wes reminded him gently. “And we wouldn’t have it otherwise. Smythe will challenge you, we all know that. So we must be ready for him.”

Wes and Blaine had always had a unique connection that Harvey marvelled at. They seemed able to communicate with nothing but a glance, even without telepathy. It was the same now that they were grown. Wes gave Blaine a look and Blaine nodded, turning from them as he strode once again to the window.

“Yes. We should prepare,” he agreed. Then his face shifted and he was staring at Harvey with the air of a man about to deliver bad news. “But there’s something else we will need to handle in the meantime.”

That had Harvey more than a bit confused. There were always a million and one things for the alpha-major to handle at any given time but what other than the threat of losing his pack could Blaine think was so important it needed their immediate attention?

“Something else, dear?” Allie echoed Harvey’s thoughts. “What else could possibly have gone wrong?”

“I’ve...found a mate you see,” Blaine explained in a rush, his usual confidence disappearing. Allie let out a delighted cry because it was wonderful news of course, a cause for celebration. Nothing was more sacred to their kind than the bond between mates.

A light went on in Harvey’s head as Blaine’s frequent disappearances began to make more sense. Nothing was more time consuming or addictive than the pursuit of one’s mate. The white haired man began to frown, thinking on all of the reasons why now was the worst timing for Blaine to become romantically entangled. But... on the other hand mated alpha’s were stronger and Smythe would have a lot harder time besting a mated pair. Perhaps this was good. Yes it was good, Harvey decided, and now that the boy had outed with it they could quickly get him mated and focused again. 

“Is that the reason why you’re always sneaking off to Columbus?” Allie asked and Blaine’s flush was answer enough. 

“I can’t say much for the timing of course but congratulations, Blaine.” Harvey grinned. “Which of Shuester’s mutts should I offer my sympathies to?” William Shuester was the alpha-major of the Columbus territory. They’d always been on good standing with the Colombus wolves even if they were a bit tame.

“Oh he’s not a Columbus boy, not officially anyway,” Wes answered for him and Harvey had to admit some personal relief. The lycans who populated big cities tended to be softer, more concerned with human matters and blending in with the people around them than preserving the lycan way of life: tame. He supposed there was nothing wrong with that, though he’d never choose it himself, but things were different here and Blaine would need a fierce mate to help him protect their coveted territory.

“Ah so he is rogue?” Allie mused. It was not so unusual for young wolves to hold off swearing in to a pack. Being a pack wolf tied you down and some young men and women wanted the freedom to wander he supposed, though it had always seemed a terribly lonely existence to Harvey. Some left for school if they could manage to hide their lineage long enough, others for jobs and others, like Sebastian Smythe, in the hopes of forming their own packs and claiming new territory.

While one always had to be wary of rogue wolves Harvey had met more than a few friendly rogues in his day and almost all of them eventually settled into pack life. Lycans were just naturally pack oriented. It was rough on their wolves in more ways than one to go too long without the bonds of packmates.

“What pack was he born in?” Allie asked curiously and strangely Blaine winced, his body betraying clear signs of unease. Harvey could smell the increase in sweat as well as the beginnings of fear on his skin.

“Good god he’s not lup is he?” He gaped fearfully and Blaine’s tension eased as he laughed and rolled his eyes.

“The only thing the lups cross the atlantic for is the alhunt Harvey,” Blaine debunked the admittedly wild assumption. Not all lycans were as civilized as those in Westerville. Though life was hard for them they tried their best to work within the means of government to ensure a brighter future, but there were others who lived in hostile countries with even harsher histories who wanted nothing to do with human beings and thought the only answers lay in violence and human domination.

Romanian wolves especially thought so. Their bloodline flowing from that of the very first wolfman they saw themselves purely as  wolves and rejected as much of the human lifestyle as they could, earning them the separate distinction of  lups . If the lycans who lived in cities like Columbus were tame, then the ones who roamed the hills of Romania were  savage . Pack Westerville was not a tame pack by any means but it was no secret that the lups thought anyone who wasn’t lup was weak and they could barely tolerate it.

“They have rogues like anyone else,” Harvey replied with a shrug. As daunting as assimilating one of the lup would have been he was a little disappointed that Blaine’s young man wasn’t one of their kind. He’d like to see Smythe try and steal something from a lup. “Young men weary of war with the vampire tribes no doubt.”

“He’s not lup Harvey,” Blaine assured him and Allie clicked her tongue impatiently.

“Well if he’s not one of the lup and not a rogue where does he come from?”

“Columbus,” Blaine repeated with an air of finality. “Originally Lima but Columbus for quite awhile now.”

Harvey stiffened in his chair, an inkling of what Blaine was trying to tell them was forming in his mind and he didn’t like it one bit. He hoped to god he was wrong. Next to him Allie paled and he knew she was thinking as he was. If Blaine’s prospective lived in Columbus but wasn’t either part of the pack or rogue he could only be one other thing.

“Human?” Harvey couldn’t help the bitterness in his tone, the grievances between their kind were too many. He’d have definitely preferred a lup. Blaine’s gaze pinned his, the weight of dominance returning, and as he held it he commanded softly and clearly, “You’ll remember that he’s lycan like us now and that I have chosen to court him. You will afford him the respect that deserves. Is that clear?”

“Yes. It’s clear.” Clear but not final. Harvey had nothing against one of the alpha-minors taking a convert as mate but it simply wasn’t going to happen with his alpha-major. The pack was in enough trouble as it was and war for their territory was coming. A weak terrified convert wasn’t going to be of any help to them. Perhaps in better times it might have been, but not now. Not on Harvey’s watch. He said nothing of his thoughts however. He knew very well that there was no use fighting with Blaine on the issue. Resistance to his claim on the human, whoever he was, would only trigger his dominant instincts and make him assert himself all the more.

He was fairly certain however that their saving grace was going to be the convert himself. He’d be begging to go home with his tail between his legs in no time. Harvey was certain that when that time came he could convince Blaine that it was best for all that he let him.

“Well,” Allie sighed in fond exasperation, breaking the tense silence between the four adults in the room. “You never do anything half measure do you Blaine?”  
__________________________________

Thursday afternoon found Kurt and Tina at the Easton Town Center. Days off for Tina were rare and an even rarer for Kurt who (as one of the senior members of a theater company) was always on call. But thanks to the directors family crisis his afternoon had been blown wide open and Tina had suggested an impromptu shopping trip in order to prepare for the weekend.

“What’s this weekend?” He’d asked.

“Full Moon!” Tina had reminded him excitedly and Kurt recalled promising to accompany her and her latest beau to the exclusive club that saturday night. The club, so named, only opened up once a month on the night of the full moon and it was open by invitation only. Everyone knew that subhumans mingled there and that to get in you had to be invited by one. Kurt had always supposed choosing the whole full moon theme was just building up the hype that surrounded them. Lycans, vampires and the full moon, it was all a gimmick he was sure but he wasn’t about to let Tina go alone regardless.

She’d been dating this guy Mike for about a month now and she was half convinced he was a vampire on the account that they never met in the daytime and all of his family members looked like pin up ads. She still didn’t know for sure but his inviting her to Full Moon was a pretty strong indication.

“If that’s the night Mike decides he wants to introduce me to his clan I want to look good,” she’d said and so off they’d went for hours of shopping and Kurt had tried not to remark too often on how insane it was to be going to a subhuman club on the most dangerous night of the month with the vampire you’d only known for a month.

They were dining alfresco at the Cheesecake Factory with their bags at their feet and Kurt was trying to drown his worries in what was admittedly the best slice of cheesecake he’d had in ages.

“I’ve been waiting for him to tell me in his own time, I don’t want to out him or anything, but I’m really hoping Saturday is the night.” Tina was saying, her foot swinging slowly as she chattered. “I think it shows real trust that he’s taking me to F.M. Don’t you?”

“That or he’s hungry,” Kurt replied spearing a section of his cake. Tina gave him a look and folded her arms primly in a gesture that usually heralded an on coming Tina Cohen-Chang verbal smack down.

“What so are you in the camp that thinks subhumans are monsters? Like they don’t have any control? Like they’re just animals who will kill people without knowing any better?”

“No,” Kurt sucked the bite of cake off of his fork with vehmanance. “I’m in the camp that thinks a person who might like to drink blood, who invites me to a private club full of blood drinkers where no one would hear me scream, owes me a bit of an explanation before I just follow him blindly into said private club.”

Tina was about to reply when a waiter who wasn’t theirs came by to refill their waters. The man was tall and fit with blond hair and the most kissable lips Kurt had ever seen on a male. Noticing Kurt’s stare the waiter smiled.

“Hi i’m Sam.  I’m not your waiter but I wasn’t about to pass up the chance to meet you,” the blond introduced himself in a pleasantly smooth voice. Sam smelled good, like grease and cheesecake from the kitchens on the surface but something more natural and masculine underneath it. At that strange thought Kurt felt his body stand to attention, hairs rising on his arms, back straightening and nose twitching as he regarded Sam carefully.

“Really?” He inquired, tilting his head as he continued to regard the admittedly handsome waiter. Tina was smiling into her napkin.“Are you sure you haven’t mistaken me for some celebrity?” 

“Definitely not.” Sam shook his shaggy blond head. “You’re really gorgeous that’s all, and my mom always said you didn’t get anything without trying.”

Kurt was pretty sure his mouth was hanging open. He’d been hit on before but never quite so openly, by a waiter no less, and he wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to say in response. He knew what he felt like saying, all manner of flirtatious things that would hopefully end with him wrapped around this beautiful stranger, because that itch in his blood was ever present. It never faded, even after that horrifying one night stand where he’d all but chewed up his partner and spat him back out. Those were exactly the things Kurt couldn’t say, for exactly that reason. Sam looked like a nice guy and nice guys didn’t deserve to get mauled in their beds and Sam didn’t look like the sort who chased after that type of attention.

“Thanks Sam but I don’t really give out my number to strangers or anything,” he lied instead. “I’m flattered though.”

Sam’s brow furrowed in momentary confusion until he glanced back at Tina who was watching them with unveiled delight and he nodded as if piecing something together.

“Are you from Columbus?” he asked and when Kurt nodded Sam sighed and stared at him with a look of longing. “I’m from Tennessee. I’ve been wandering since I was eighteen so I’m pretty used to the rogue lifestyle but...” with an abashed little grin Sam admitted on a gust of breath, “I’d settle in Columbus for the rest of my life if you’d let me take you out tonight. I can totally be tamed.”

Tina gawked at him for a second and then outright barked a laugh which she quickly stifled with her hands as Kurt gaped at the blond man in front of him. That was new. He’d heard all manner of come ons in his adult life but never before had a man insinuated in one breath that he was some sort of free spirited rebel and that he’d gladly domesticate himself for a date in the next. Who even said things like that?

“Excuse me?” Kurt asked, wondering if he’d heard it all right.

“I said-” Sam opened his mouth to repeat but a passing waiter glared at him and interrupted him before he could finish.

“Evans your orders are up! What the hell are you doing?”

“Right sorry,” turning to Kurt the blond pleaded, “just think about it okay.” And then he hurried away leaving Kurt staring after him in appalled wonder.

“Can you please tell me what the hell just happened?” He asked and Tina started laughing again.

“Blondie just went out on a limb to tell you he’d like a June wedding,” she filled in and Kurt groaned.

“That’s what I thought. I thought that on top of losing my mind and become a sick sexual deviant that my randoms had now begun to skip the fantastic sex and jump right to the inappropriate proposals.” Attacking his cheesecake again Kurt muttered, “I mean what else could be happening?”

“Kurt you’re not a sexual deviant.”

“He thought I was lycan T, you weren’t there,” Kurt moaned around his fork. “You didn’t see what I did to him. I hurt him. I don’t even  remember hurting him. I never even botherd to get his name. This isn’t me!” He cried violently and Tina’s eyes widened at him in shock as his eyes stung with the beginnings of tears. He blinked them away and said on a shuddering breath, “maybe he was right.” There was this part of him that feared. “Is it possible to be born lycan and just not know until...”

“You’re not lycan Kurt,” Tina assured him, laying her hand consolingly on his arm. “Unless you got bit by one sometime in the last month then yeah, you’d be going lycan. Maybe you have, maybe one of your one nighters was secretly-”

“Don’t even joke about that!” Kurt shuddered. It was one thing to worry about his sanity, another thing to worry about his whole person changing. 

“Kurt you were sick, you’ve been stressed with work and losing Rex....” Tina fluttered her hands as if they could encompass all the many reasons why it was okay for Kurt to have mauled a perfect stranger. “You need to relax. Liking it a little rough in bed isn’t the end of the world. Maybe if you stopped repressing your fantasies they wouldn’t come to such a boiling point.”

“Just what do you think you know about my fantasies Tina Cohen-Chang?”

“Are you saying you haven’t ever fantasized about rough fantastically dirty sex?”

Kurt would really have liked to say no, a month ago he might even have been able to with sincerity, but all he’d been dreaming about the last month was fantastically dirty sex so....  
He threw his napkin at her.

“Don’t shoot the messenger. Clearly you’re going through a stage of sexual liberation. Liberate thy sex Kurt Hummel,” she grinned at him and nodded towards something over his shoulder. “And if you aren’t interested in the blond I think that guy might be interested in having his way with you.”

“Seriously?” Kurt twisted in his chair to get a look at whatever, or whoever, she was talking about. “Did every guy in Columbus decide I was attractive because this is getting....” Kurt trailed off, his eyes catching those of a mountain of a man leaning up against a car across the street. He was staring directly at Kurt and no one else, just standing there as if he was waiting for Kurt to move. He didn’t seem perturbed at all that Kurt had caught him staring, if anything he stood straighter, flexing his gigantic arms and puffing out his chest like some ape in the middle of a mating dance. Whoever he was and whatever his deal was he put Kurt on edge and the last thing he wanted to do with him was liberate his sex. Whatever that actually meant. 

“No thanks.” He wrinkled his nose as he turned his back on the strange man across the street. “I got over my meathead jock phase in high school.” 

“Fine,” Tina relented, her teasing grin fading to something warmer and more comforting. “Just try and relax okay? Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re changing and that doesn’t have to be bad.”

Kurt didn’t disagree with that, it was just that these changes were coming on too fast and he wasn’t sure that was normal or that he wanted any of them. He was exhausted of worrying though so he said nothing more on the subject. He and Tina finished off their deserts quickly, chatting some more about their weekend plans and the pitfalls of relationships. They paid for them and while they waited for the waiter to bring back their cards Kurt went to the mens room. He’d done his business and was just leaning forward to turn on the sink when the door opened behind him and the guy from across the street walked in.

For a moment Kurt froze. A tiny voice inside screamed a bunch of warnings and all too quickly a thousand reasons for why it was so wrong for this man to be here when he’d been watching him only moments before went tearing through his mind. Danger his senses seemed to shriek, everything about this man reeked of it.

“Hello,” the stranger said in a rough voice. He had long dark hair and dark stubble covering his jaw. The sound of his voice seemed to flip a switch for Kurt and suddenly he was no longer paralyzed with fear. He knew somehow that he couldn’t afford to be, that the only thing this man would respond to was strength. 

“What do you want?” he snapped, unable to stop the words coming out like a snarl. He was pretty sure he was all but baring his teeth at the man but he couldn’t care about how strange he must look just then. Let the man think he was certifiable if it kept him at a distance.

“Don’t be like that sweetheart.” The stranger came up close to him, lifting a hand to place on Kurt’s hip. “I can smell how bad you want it. I just want to help you out.”

“Let go of me!” Kurt batted the offensive touch away without thinking, then he pushed and to his surprise the muscular man went stumbling backwards as if Kurt weren’t half his size.

“Oh so I’ve got to earn it?” The stranger crooned at him as he straightened up. He seemed weirdly thrilled by the fact that Kurt had almost knocked him to the floor. “Fuck, I’m gonna enjoy this. Don’t worry baby I know what you really want. I’m more than enough alpha to get on top of you.”

“What?” Kurt’s eyes widened in shock. “What the hell are you talking about? Don’t come near me. I’ll-” Kurt didn’t finish as just then the door burst open and the blond waiter appeared and to Kurt’s increasing shock he was making a sound he’d never heard come out of a human being before. An honest to god hair raising growl.

“Leave him alone. He’s not interested,” the blond ordered and Kurt could swear he saw the other guys hair stand on end as an answering rumble came from his throat.

“What, you don’t think I’ll fight you for him pretty puppy?”

Sam lunged forward, pinning the guy to the wall with an arm around his throat as they snarled and snapped at each other savagely. Nothing about this was human, Kurt’s brain was slow to process but when it did he almost swallowed his tongue.

Lycan’s it dawned on him with horror. They were both lycans and they were honest to god going to fight over him like he was a slab of meat. He didn’t know what terrified him more, the prospect or the strange lack of fear he felt. No, rather there was something stirring inside, putting such pressure on his chest that he wanted to throw back his head and howl with it; something with eyes.

With the both of them preoccupied Kurt turned on shaking legs and ran.  

He couldn’t explain to Tina why he’d come tearing out of the mens room white as a sheet looking like a bat escaping from hell. He couldn’t tell her that when he’d never seen any before two Lycan’s had come out of the woodwork to fight over him. Not on top of Tuesday night. That would make it real. That would be too many coincidences in a row and that would mean Kurt would really have to think about what it all meant.

So instead he just insisted that they go, he drove on autopilot the entire way home and by the time he’d closed the door of his home behind him he’d convinced himself that it was all just a string of coincidences. What else could he think?

He wasn’t lycan after all. Even if it would explain a lot he’d know if he’d been born that way and he’d remember running into a werewolf and getting bitten. Wouldn’t he?

Of course you would , he scolded himself,  and on saturday you’ll know for sure .

That was exactly right. Saturday was the full moon and he and Tina were going to a subhuman club. Wonderful.


	4. Dream Man

He was in a forest. He stood in the middle of a group of young boys, all of them naked and unconcerned with being so. The wet heat of summer air pressed against Kurt’s skin as he looked at each of them. Their faces were familiar to him, he’d had this dream many times before, but he knew none of them beyond the dream. The boy in the center of their circle was different. Kurt knew him without knowing how. Indeed every sense he had recognized him and drew them together.  
  
 _“Tonight. It has to be tonight.”_ A brawny boy with dark hair spoke and the circle looked to the boy with the wild, black curls and bright eyes.  
  
 _“Tonight. Tonight,”_ the circle of boys agreed.  
  
 _“He will hunt us,”_ the boy with the dark curls warned and Kurt felt cold fear settle in his belly. His blood running hot and thirsty in his veins was stronger, making his skin itch.  
  
 _“I will hunt with you,”_ Kurt heard himself say, and the boy with the hazel, and yet more than hazel, eyes looked to him, looked inside him and Kurt’s bones were weighted by them, so heavy they shook under their pressure. Inside, something stirred, something bigger than his human frame and hungry for freedom. Something with eyes.  
  
Suddenly everything was different. The circle was gone and he was no longer a boy but a man, face to face with another, the boy with the hazel eyes, only older.   
  
Kurt knew this man’s name. He watched as the man stepped toward a patch of moonlight that cut through the trees. They both seemed to wait at the edge of a knife point. Waiting, waiting, waiting.  
  
Blaine turned and said with quiet intensity, _“Answer the call.”_  
  
The wind picked up and Blaine disappeared into the trees. There came the sick sound of crunching bones and a gut-churning groan that had Kurt’s heart picking up pace and his palms sweating.   
  
_“Blaine?”_ His breath came in heavy pants, his body thrummed with tension, that presence inside still swelling in his bones as if it sought to break out of his skeleton. He wanted to follow Blaine, knew on some instinctual level that he was meant to, but he knew with a dreamer’s certainty that if he walked into the darkness there would be a monster waiting there.   
  
_“Kurt!”_ Came an agonized shout. Blaine sounded hurt and that was all Kurt needed. He stepped past the moonlight to answer Blaine’s call of distress and shrieked with terror when a pair of glowing eyes rushed out of the dark. Something heavy slammed into his front and knocked him to the ground, teeth tore into his arm and he heard the splatter of blood on the forest floor too loudly in his ears.   
  
He screamed himself awake.  
  
Kurt showered longer than usual that Saturday morning. He’d woken from the strangest nightmare, a frightening cocktail of an old dream and new fears, shaking and covered in cooling sweat. When he’d finally been able to stumble into the bathroom, he’d stood beneath the shower’s cold spray and washed it all away. He barely thought about the tears, he finally gave them their freedom, just stood there letting the water numb him until he almost turned blue.   
  
It wasn’t until he’d gotten out to towel himself dry that Kurt noticed that his head wasn’t buzzing. Nor did his bones ache for that matter, and the night before he hadn’t dreamt of sex. Even more astonishing than that—he didn’t particularly desire any just then! Weeks of the same mysterious maladies, just gone. He stood there in his towel, shivers turning to trembles as laughter bordering on hysterical bubbled up from his chest. Was he finally getting back to normal? Dare he actually hope that? His stomach chose that moment to let loose a fierce growl, churning painfully with hunger, but he kept laughing despite the discomfort because he would gladly have his biggest concern be hunger any day of the week. Hunger—what a wonderfully normal problem to have.  
  
Kurt slipped into a pair of comfortable underwear and decided not to bother dressing further in favor of shortening the length between the time it would take to cook breakfast and the time it would take to eat it. He set eggs and a steak to cooking (unseasoned because with his recurring headaches he’d become sensitive to spices and other strong smells) and couldn’t resist the box of sugar cookies he spied on the top shelf of his cupboard in all of its quick and delicious glory. He felt guilty about the cookies so he got out a tub of yogurt and the jar of homemade granola he kept on the third shelf and he ate. 

 

Kurt Hummel bit into a buttery, soft sugar cookie and closed his eyes humming softly as the sweetness of it soaked into his taste buds and seemed to set up permanent residence there. He’d never tasted anything as good as those cookies, the flavors so vibrant they had personality, and his yogurt had never been bolder or sharper on his tongue. It was so good he idly contemplated having sex with his food and he supposed in his head it was a slow languid love affair he carried out with it, but too soon there was nothing but an empty box and a hollow tub in front of him and Kurt stared despondently at the remains.  
  
His nose however alerted him to the readiness of his actual breakfast and with an eagerly rumbling belly he grabbed a plate from the drying rack and served up a pair of perfect eggs, sunny side up, and a thick, juicy steak, from which the most mouth watering aroma wafted, so good his teeth ached at just the smell. He all but swallowed the eggs and chased after every last drop of their beautiful golden yolk (even so far as to suck on his own tongue). The steak he cut into and almost groaned, as the aroma seemed to intensify. He bit off a forkful and his eyes fell shut of their own accord and he one hundred percent absolutely did groan. He was definitely going to have to shop at that new grocer again. This was heaven, blessed relief after such a horrible last couple of weeks. If he could just sit here and eat this steak he’d be happy for the rest of his life.  
  
His phone rang and he glared at it for a moment, begrudging its noise for interrupting the only bit of solace he’d had in days, but with the thought that it might be work related, he hurried across the kitchen to answer before it could reach its final ring.  
  
“Hummel residence, how may I help you?” Too many years acting as Derek’s assistant had ingrained formal phone etiquette into Kurt, he couldn’t quite shake it no matter how often Finn and Tina teased him.  
  
“Kurt?” The voice on the other end of the line was no one from the theater and Kurt had only heard it once in person but he knew who it belonged to. Yes it was a little embarrassing to admit that it was most likely because he’d been hearing that voice frequently in his dreams (decidedly dirty ones, at that) but he was too excited to care much about why he knew it was Blaine. It was Blaine! He sucked in a delighted breath hoping that Blaine couldn’t hear it and twirled around where he stood as if his body were searching for something to do. He settled for leaning up against his refrigerator.  
  
“Tis I. Who is this?” He asked, feigning ignorance because he might feel like a teenager with a crush, but that didn’t mean he had to act like one.  
  
“This is Blaine... Anderson. We met the other day? You probably don’t remember...” Blaine sounded rather adorably crestfallen that Kurt didn’t appear to remember him right away. It made him smile.  
  
“At Brewers,” he replied, unable to pretend any longer and not bothered by the warmth in his voice. “My knight in shining leather.”  
  
“You remembered what I was wearing but not my name?” Blaine asked, sounding amused rather than suspicious.  
  
“What’s in a name Blaine? Clothes on the other hand-”  
  
“-presentation is the best impression.”

 

Kurt’s eyes widened in surprise as Blaine finished his favorite catch phrase alongside him. “You read Jennifer Styles?”  
  
He wasn’t ashamed at all that his knees felt a little weak at the possibility. Jennifer Styles not only ran a popular (if small) boutique in New York City, she was also one of his favorite bloggers. He didn’t know what it was that attracted him to her writing (besides all of the interesting tips and fabulous insight into what was coming off the runways) but he’d been in love with her for years.  
  
“A friend of mine loves her,” Blaine admitted with a rueful laugh. “He’d read her blog every morning and try and get me to discuss the merits of striped patterns versus dotted.” Instantly Kurt was taken back to last month, when life had felt perfect, sitting at the table with laptop open and coffee in hand. Rex would have his head in his lap and he’d pet him as he read aloud the best bits and carried on like the dog had an opinion on fashionable patterns.  
  
He felt a familiar pang of loss but for the first time the wound didn’t feel hot and angry. It still hurt, but life often did. Just imagining Blaine and some roommate bonding similarly over the blog made him feel strangely comforted; maybe it was just Blaine who was comfortable.    
  
“I applaud your choice in friends.” Kurt grinned as if Blaine could see him. “That reference to the one and only Miss Styles almost got you off the hook for waiting an entire week to call me.”  
  
“Oh so you did remember me?” Blaine sounded smug and Kurt felt his neck go a little hot realizing that he’d been caught.  
  
“It’s a possibility,” he allowed, smile growing because he just knew Blaine’s was. He could see him so clearly, as if he was standing right there with smile beaming at him, and he was so unbearably gorgeous that Kurt sighed.  
  
 _How come it all feels better when I’m talking to him?_  
  
“Can I confess something?” Blaine asked, sounding flustered now and Kurt’s interest hiked up a notch.  
  
“The deal breaking ‘sorry I ever met you’ kind of confession?” Kurt asked. “You’re not a Human Conservationist are you?”  
  
“No,” Blaine chuckled, apparently completely understanding Kurt’s ire with that particular political party.  
  
“Good. Confess away, nothing could scare me away now.”  
  
“Really?” Blaine sounded skeptical. “I could have heads in my basement. I could be a mad axe murderer who lures people into my home with disarming public rescues from dizzy spells.”  
  
“And still I’d rather take that over dating a Conservationist,” Kurt snipped in reply, his distaste for the right wing carrying him away for a moment. Then he realized he’d said dating, like he and Blaine were an item or something, and his whole face flamed red. Luckily Blaine couldn’t see his face and he could play his slip down.  
  
“I just hate it when you’re out to a nice dinner and the conversation turns to how he’d love to remove the freedom of minorities, women, and sub-humans. It’s a major turnoff for me.”  
  
“I promise I won’t discuss my plans for world oppression until after cocktails,” Blaine responded humorously and Kurt couldn’t help the way his spirits were lifting. Blaine had all but said he expected to take him out to dinner after all.  
  
“So what is this deep dark confession?” He asked, hoping whatever it was it wasn’t going to be the one flaw in the otherwise perfection that he saw. There was something about Blaine that pulled him in, made him feel known. If Kurt were a bit more of a romantic he’d say something whimsical, like they were old souls who had shared a hundred lives before this one.  
  
“I didn’t forget to call you,” Blaine admitted with the earnestness of a man on trial. “I didn’t write your number down on a piece of paper somewhere and lose it only to think about you when I found it again, and I hate that you probably think that’s what happened. I had to go handle some business and I’m sorry if that made you feel like talking to you again wasn’t important to me.”  
  
“Blaine.” Kurt wanted to tell him it was okay. He wanted to take the smile that was on his face and the tender note he heard in Blaine’s voice and wrap himself up in them until he was made of nothing but the two. He wanted to jump through the phone and press kisses all over Blaine’s cheeks.  
  
“No, Kurt,” the other man insisted. “Hearing your voice, hearing you say my name, it’s all stuff that shouldn’t matter, it’s so inconsequential...but it’s not. It’s really not. It’s everything I’ve wanted,” he faltered off with a quiet gasp, as if shocked to hear his own words. “I’m creeping you out, aren’t I?”  
  
“No Blaine you aren’t—”  
  
“No. This isn’t what you say to someone when you’ve only spoken to them once. I’ve never been good with the dating scene.” Blaine sounded frustrated with himself and Kurt bit his lip, unsure of what to make of all the sudden intensity between them or Blaine’s strange words. Blaine was right; this _wasn’t_ what two people said when they’d only spoken once before. He couldn’t explain why Blaine had stayed in his head since they’d met, why Blaine had crawled into his dreams (both good and bad) and why he himself felt like he just couldn’t pass over that moment in Brewers and _move on_ with his life like it hadn’t changed for good. There was no answer for it, mere attraction certainly didn’t explain it, but he didn’t feel like there was any _moving on_ from Blaine Anderson, and stranger still, he didn’t want to try.  
  
“Maybe not,” Kurt heard himself agree quietly, almost with surprise. “But if it makes you feel any better I’m glad you said it.” Worrying his bottom lip Kurt paused for breath before admitting anxiously, “I wanted you to call. I hoped you would and when you didn’t I... I’m just glad you did.” He waited with his heart drumming loudly in his ears for Blaine’s reaction. Should he have been so candid? But Blaine had admitted so much and sounded so afraid of what he would think. How could he have given him any less?  
  
“May I take you to dinner tonight, Kurt?” Warm, tingling relief washed through him like a wave. His fingers curled around the phone as something stirred inside. It was so _much_ that it felt alive. It felt like it wanted closer to Blaine, needed him somehow.  
  
“Yes, yes you may.” He answered, unapologetic of the breathiness that crept into his voice. His mind was already jumping to his wardrobe and piecing together a million outfits. Maybe Tina would come over and... Tina. “Wait oh no I—”  
  
“What is it?” Blaine asked, an edge of hurt to his tone and Kurt was quick to explain.  
  
“It’s my friend, Tina. I told her I’d go out with her tonight.” There was a pause that felt painfully long.  
  
“Can you reschedule?” Kurt winced, though he was unsure why. It wasn’t like Blaine had _ordered_ him to do it, he hadn’t even outright asked, but he could sense that was what he wanted, that it was important even, and saying no was surprisingly hard.  
  
“I would, it’s just it’s the full moon tonight and she’s got this new boyfriend who is a vampire, or at least we think he must be, and he’s taking her to that club that—”  
  
“Lună Plină?” Kurt fell short when Blaine demanded, voice suddenly harsh, and he gaped at the foreign sounding words.  
  
“What did you say?” He asked for clarification and Blaine sucked in an anxious sounding breath.  
  
“Full Moon, I mean. Sorry, everyone I know calls it Lună Plină. Those big words on the sign? They’re  Romanian for Full Moon. ”  
  
“You’re Romanian?” Kurt asked skeptically. He knew Blaine’s face well by now (all those dreams) and while he certainly didn’t look strictly Caucasian he didn’t strike Kurt as particularly Romanian looking either. Not that he knew anything about Romania besides what he’d read about in books (and not much at that).  
  
“I studied it in school.” Blaine seemed unconcerned with that and immediately got back to the subject that did interest him. “Kurt, are you telling me that you’re going with a vampire to Lună Plină on the full moon?”  
  
Yes he was, he’d much rather be out to dinner with a handsome new interest but he could hardly let Tina go alone could he? He didn’t need a virtual stranger lecturing him.  
  
“I am. My friend’s going and I’m going as back up. I’m sure it’s perfectly—” But Blaine had heard all he was going to hear it looked like because before Kurt could finish he snapped. “Absolutely not! I forbid it.”  
  
He must have heard that wrong. He had to have heard that wrong, right? There was no way a guy he’d had two conversations with had the gall to try and forbid him doing _anything_.  
  
“Excuse me?” He asked with disbelief and to his complete and utter shock Blaine repeated what he would have sworn he couldn’t have possibly said.  
  
“You aren’t going there. Call your friend and cancel. I can explain it all to you later but under no circumstances-”  
  
“Under no circumstances are you giving me orders!” Kurt thundered over him. “I don’t know where you come from but in my world a little flirtation doesn’t mean you own me.” It wasn’t just that Blaine had said the word forbid, it was the _way_ he said it: heavy and dark with an underlying threat that warned against disobedience. Kurt had never heard a voice _do_ that before and it was terrifying the way everything inside him wanted to buckle beneath the pressure and submit to whatever that voice commanded.   
`  
The intensity between them instantly seemed to lose its charm and became unsettling the more he reflected on it. And come to think of it, it was strange that Blaine had called the house number. He rarely gave his number out to strangers as it was but when he did he was in the habit of giving out his cell as he had always imagined that to be safer. He had given Blaine his cell, not the house phone, he was sure of it.  
  
“I think we should forget dinner.” His heart had begun to pound in alarm and the unease he felt only increased when Blaine made a sound he couldn’t even describe. It resembled nothing he’d ever heard come out of another human being. Yet somehow he knew it meant fury. It made his hair stand on end and that _thing_ inside stirred stronger. He wanted badly to take his words back, to lay himself out bare throated and bellied until that fury was appeased. By now he was used to being terrified of the things he wanted, but the prick of tears came anyway; he had really hoped that this nightmare was over.  
  
“And I don’t think you should call me again,” he forced the words out and stomped down on the protest welling up inside him because there shouldn’t _be_ any. This whole thing was insane and even if he was wrong and there was nothing off with Blaine there was most certainly something off with _him_.  
  
“Kurt wait! You have to l—”  
  
But Kurt didn’t have to do anything. Except hang up. That he had to do.   
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
It was the day of a full moon, which meant that Westerville was stirring. Its human residents were quieter, more wary of their neighbors, rushing about their days trying to accomplish everything the day needed doing before night fell. Neutral town or not, no human being with any brain would be venturing out after dark if they could help it. For the lycans of Westerville, anticipation of moonrise was a double-edged sword. Moonrise would bring them to their strongest, to their fastest and most alive, but in the back of all their heads was the knowledge that somewhere out there Hunters were meeting and sharpening the weapons they believed would help them take down an unwary _monster_.   
  
Most wouldn’t dare venture into Westerville for fear of the laws that protected its civilians, human and subhuman alike, but they’d be waiting in the wings for those whose moonlight runs would carry them out of city limits, and still there were others for whom the law meant nothing. Those were truly the ones to fear and the possibility that one of them or the children could be killed that night was nothing they could scoff at.  
  
No one in the pack had forgotten Sally, the young beta they’d lost the year before, and they never would. Once you were pack, you were always pack. Even if they had wanted to, David would never allow it. Sally had been his mate, and a wolf who lost his mate was as good as walking dead.   
  
Wes could not imagine losing the woman in his arms, or allowing anyone else to touch her, let alone letting any harm come to her. Emmaline was simply the purest, _best_ thing there was and she wasn’t even really his yet, so to imagine losing her once they had fully bonded? It was the stuff he was sure the devil must use to darken the corners of hell.  
  
“Wes,” she panted his name, her blue eyes round as saucers and glazed with passion despite the plea in her voice. He smiled down at her, knowing that if he refused to let her move from the wall and kissed her again that she would let him and their morning could be spent doing far more pleasing things than either of the tasks still left to them. He knew that if he slid his hand along her thigh and up under her panties, that not only wouldn’t she stop him, she’d tilt her head back and offer him that beautiful alabaster throat in submission and he—was being pulled backwards by his collar, separated from Emmaline, who let out a mortified squeak and flushed a brilliant red before she slid out of his arms and dashed down the hall and out of sight. Wes turned and growled at his alpha, the fact that Wes had already recognized his scent the only thing saving Blaine from a quick shift and a throat full of teeth.  
  
“It takes me forever to get that woman alone and the _one_ time.” He grumbled. “Remind me not to cut you any slack about paroles when you’ve got Kurt pinned somewhere.”   
  
“Change of plans,” Blaine’s tone was brisk as he spoke and Wes immediately snapped out of his mood and stood at attention. “I need you, David, and your protégés to come with me. Plan A isn’t going to work.”  
  
Wes nodded, but inside he was aghast. Plan A in operation Bring Kurt To Westerville was for Blaine to sit down with him to an early dinner and tell him the whole truth. Then, he was to guide Kurt on his first run with the aid of one of their mutual friends in Pack Columbus, and if he agreed, to bring him to stay at Dalton while he got used to his new circumstances. If worst came to worst, their friend from Columbus had agreed to watch him when Blaine couldn’t if Kurt would rather have stayed in his own home until he was more comfortable with the idea of being lycan and Blaine might approach the subject of him spending some time around the pack then.  
  
Their last option, the one Blaine had hoped to avoid at all cost, was to go to Columbus in force and take Kurt back with them whether he agreed with it or not. Wes didn’t have to really know Kurt yet to know that Blaine thought Plan B was not something he would forgive lightly, but he’d not worried about it because he hadn’t imagined what with them being ly-kindred that Kurt would turn down an innocent sounding dinner with a guy he was attracted to.   
  
“Did he have other plans?” Wes tried to make sense of it all, keeping pace with Blaine as they swept down the hall, practically scattering the few clumps of students they encountered along the way as they breezed past.  
  
“Yes,” Blaine growled. “Lună Plină.”  
  
“Good god!” Wes gaped, unable to stop his sheer horror at the thought of a month-old convert gallivanting in Lună Plină. Dancing themselves into a frenzy and finding someone to fuck them sore was what a lot of the city lycans chose to do rather than free their wolves and take a proper run. Even at their wildest time of the month, some lycans would never be anything but tame, but tame or not, full moon night was a good time to die for making stupid mistakes. Getting intoxicated and following a stranger home was a great way to end up with a Hunter’s bullet through your skull and that wasn’t even touching the kind of fights that broke out over who was going home with whom.  
  
“Exactly, he absolutely can’t go,” Blaine explained and when he wasn’t quite able to meet his eye Wes knew for sure that he’d done something stupid.  
  
“Well did you warn him?” He asked and Blaine’s ears turned pinker at the tips.  
  
“I told him I wouldn’t allow it... like he was one of us.”  
  
Well that explained why they were at Plan B. Every alpha was born with a strong will, but only the strongest alphas were able to force that will on others. They called it alpha control, and it was definitely on the more supernatural end of their abilities. It wasn’t anywhere near foolproof however, the stronger-willed the opponent the harder it was for an alpha to cow them, and it was especially weakened by distance. Forcing your will on someone through the phone was only worth the effort if the person in question was terribly weak-willed to begin with—that or human.  
  
“Jesus, Blaine,” Wes groaned, only just realizing the magnitude of trouble this new development was going to cause. “He still thinks he’s human. You probably scared the shit out of him.” The ability to subjugate the will of others was pretty indispensable for the alpha-major. A command swiftly obeyed was often the difference between life and death for one of them, and it was helpful that a stern word from the alpha was all it took sometimes to bring a restless wolf back into line. He could understand how Blaine’s first instinct to the prospect of Kurt wandering into danger would be to put on his alpha voice but _really_.    
  
“He wanted to put himself in danger and I just...”  
  
“Spoke like an alpha and not the nice, safe, boring human you were supposed to pretend to be,” Wes filled in with a sigh.  
  
“I know,” Blaine replied with a wince. “I’ve kicked myself enough, thank you. We have to go get him and we’ve got to do it now, because if we have to pry him out of Lună Plină _against_ his will it will be a fight.”  
  
Jesus H. Christ. That was the understatement of the century. A malleable convert who also just happened to be a beautiful beta, strolling into a club full of moon mad alphas and all but howling for some obliging soul to do something to relieve him? No, all of the alphas trying to get a piece of him, that would cause a fight. A bunch of Westerville boys breaking up the party and spiriting off with the prize lamb in Columbus territory? They might be city boys, but no self-respecting alpha was _that_ tame. No, this was going to be a bloodbath. Wes reached for his phone.  
  
“We’ll need to call Puck,” Blaine instructed as they swept through the doors of the great hall. “As much help as we can get from Pack Columbus the better.”    
  
“One step ahead of you,” Wes replied as he punched in their old friend’s number.  
  
Blaine nodded and without pause he tipped back his head and howled. In this modern day and age, cell phones might rule the communication market, but nothing lit a fire under a guy’s ass like the howl to arms. Long, loud, and high, that sound would carry for miles and chill the blood of anyone who chanced to hear it. The forest surrounding Dalton went eerily still as everything living paused and held its breath.  
  
One by one they came, slipping out of the trees on silent paws to form a circle around their alpha. The Guard had assembled.

~*~*~

As night fell, Kurt looked back on that morning's events with a strange disconnect. It was not that he no longer feared the changes in his body, though he no longer had a constant headache, nor did he seem to be suffering any more growing pains. He was unusually aware of all his senses and therefore could not escape how sharp everything seemed to smell and how loudly he could imagine hearing his own blood rushing through his veins, it was just that his strange conversation with Blaine had pushed him into an old, familiar defense mode, that if he were honest, he was actually grateful for.  He was sick of feeling weak and broken.   
  
In retrospect, he had only been fooling himself this morning, thinking that anything about him was normal, he had only to look at the state of his kitchen and catalogue everything he’d consumed for breakfast that morning to see just how not normal things were. All that food had satisfied his stomach, but rather than leave him slow and sleepy like it should have, Kurt found himself awake and ready as any seasoned marathon runner seconds before the whistle. He had no idea what was going on, only a certainty that something was, and that somehow Blaine was involved with it. Blaine, an absolute stranger, had forbidden him to go to Full Moon that night. And terrifyingly enough there was something inside Kurt that seemed to turn to want to roll over and obey, a very real, very vocal, uneasy part of him that accounted for his jittery legs and the constant desire to call Tina and cancel, twisting in his gut and making him sweat.   
  
It was strange, it was frightening. Blaine was probably some sort of subhuman with some sort of ability to manipulate him, who knew how long Blaine could have been doing ‘ _whatever it was_ ’, and maybe that explained everything that had been going on with him this month. He was in danger, that’s one thing he knew for sure and the one thing his instincts focused on. Kurt Hummel rolled over for no one, and he was absolutely not going to be anyone’s victim. Whatever Blaine had tried to do to him wasn’t going to work, and fear or no fear, the only one who was going to be in control of his life from now on was him. It was high time he stopped curling into a ball and letting life hit him and started fighting back. He’d done it in high school, with bullies, and in college and beyond with every ‘adult’ version life could throw at him. He’d get to the bottom of what was going on with him, figure out how Blaine was involved, he just knew Blaine was, and take back his life. So see if he didn’t.  
  
Like every major battle he’d ever prepared for, Kurt started with getting dressed. That night when he slipped into the clothes he’d picked out for his trip to Full Moon, he did so with purpose. Tina’s all but declared Vampire beau, Michael, had instructed them on Full Moon’s rules and corresponding dress code.  When Mike’s red Bentley pulled up outside, Kurt strode out of his home armored in an open Tom Ford waistcoat, skin tight trousers and a killer pair of Prada boots.  
  
He stopped short when Tina leapt excitedly from the car decked in a red and black Dior number that Kurt had helped her select for its gothic undertones (while maintaining elegance, thank you very much). It wasn’t the sexy if edgy dress that gave him pause, or even the rush of energy he felt stepping outside his door and into the night. He shuddered with it, but Tina didn’t seem to notice, indeed it was the dazed way her eyes looked and the way he could smell Mike all over her, like she’d doused herself in essence of Chang before leaving her house that night.  
  
His nose twitched as she ran up to him, her grin so brilliant it almost rivaled the brightness of the moon overhead and as her hand reached up to her throat Kurt’s eyes were drawn to the ornate brass choker she wore there. It wasn’t just some piece of costume jewelry either. It was the real deal, heavy and clasped, and engraved with strange symbols that Kurt had no hope of making sense of.   
  
“We’re official, Kurt,” Tina gushed, stroking the metal clasped around her throat. “Michael claimed me, and he wants to take me to meet his sire someday soon.” She sounded breathless with excitement, and Kurt wanted to be happy for her, but all he could feel was alarm at the concrete confirmation that not only was Mike an actual honest-to-god Vampire, he was apparently serious enough to lay that strange claim thing Tina had tried many times to explain to him in order to prepare him for tonight. All humans in attendance at Full Moon had to be accompanied by a subhuman member, everyone knew that and Kurt was fine with it as it seemed like the safest way to go about partying with strange beings he didn’t understand and had no hope of defending himself against.   
  
They could wear what they wanted so long as all ‘claim designation’ areas were visible. A claim meant that they were already partnered and unavailable for any sort of play with anyone else in attendance. You could tell who was partnered with who based on what kind of claim indicator they were wearing. Vamps bit their partners traditionally on the neck, and according to Tina, it was uncouth to parade your bare neck when you were taking the ‘love bite’. So if you happened to be dating a vampire and getting your bite on, and he had any respect for you, he’d present you with a pretty choker to wear to preserve your modesty and warn others away. Wizards were supposedly fond of bracelets, while lycans preferred to decorate their human lovers with collars.  
  
Kurt had never dated wizard, vampire, or lycan, to his knowledge, and he certainly wouldn’t be going in to the club as Michael’s date, so he’d be going bare, all areas where anyone who cared to mark him would open for the taking. That made him incredibly uneasy, but he’d much prefer to bare his naked limbs with pride and challenge anyone who dared to try and take that from him, than to wear some sort of _collar_ that put him on level with somebody’s _pet_.  
  
“Kurt, are you growling at me?” Tina asked, her excitement draining away into uncertainty as Kurt was snapped out of his thoughts. He realized belatedly that his hands were clenched and his teeth were bared at his best friend, his body tensed and his skin alive with some sort of current, as if it was prepared for Tina to leap on him and try to wrestle him into a choker of his own. With blinding speed, almost in the span of a blink, Michael had exited the car and appeared by Tina’s side, drawing her back and putting his body between them.  
  
 _Stop that!_ Kurt ordered himself firmly, instantly embarrassed by his volatile reaction to Tina’s new jewelry. He was not going to be one of those people who judged every subhuman by what they saw in bad horror movies. He’d never heard anything but great things about Mike from Tina and she obviously adored him so he _would_ find some way to be happy about the fact that she’d decided to trust him with her blood supply.  
  
He was trying. He really was. He wasn’t this distrustful normally, it was just that... he could _smell_ Mike, his strangeness, his _threat_ , and it was all over his friend, taking over her naturally sweet scent and consuming her, _claiming_ her. He heard the growl this time as it ripped out of his throat, felt the hairs on his arms raise even as that something moved inside again. It clawed at the confines of his skin, a restless animal pacing the prison of his flesh and bone as he struggled to take in air and master his strange impulse to lunge at the vampire between him and Tina.  
  
“Kurt?” Tina’s voice, high with concern, broke through the fog in his mind. “Ouch Mike, that’s my arm! Kurt?” Tina was at his side again reaching for his arm and soothing him with gentle strokes even as Mike stood just steps away poised to yank her away if Kurt so much as sneezed.   
  
“Look I know this is big, I mean, I never planned on falling in love with a vampire,” Tina was explaining to him softly. “I know how much it will change my life, but I’m not scared of that. I want Mike and everything that means, and he wants me. Be happy for us, Kurt, please.”  
  
 _What are you doing?!_ He demanded of himself. _This is your best friend! Get your head out of your ass and congratulate her. Vampire doesn’t equal monster and you know it. You’re so much better than this, Hummel._  
  
As if he’d read Kurt’s mind, Mike took a tiny step forward and then another with his hands raised when Kurt did not respond negatively to his slow advance.  
  
“I know our people have been enemies for centuries, and that tonight of all nights it is hard for you to trust one of my kind,” Mike said, coming to stand beside Tina. He looked down at her and she looked up at him and in that moment they were suddenly alone in the night, standing beneath the stars like the only two people left in the world. When Mike finally looked back at Kurt and spoke next, Kurt believed every word he uttered.  
  
“We are natural enemies with a bloody past behind us, but we are more than our history. More than what hurts us. We can be better than the people who came before us.” He reached for Tina’s hand and she slid her fingers between his with a smile. “At least that is what Tina keeps saying. I usually save myself time and just agree with her.”  
  
For the first time since Blaine’s call that morning Kurt felt the urge to smile.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
The music was loud; the light warm and dim reminding him of flickering torchlight. Noah Puckerman (Puck, if you didn’t want a beating) had been to Lună Plină many times before that night. Like any self-respecting lycan in Pack Columbus as soon as he’d been legal to drink (or in Puck’s case as soon as he’d had a passable fake I.D.) he’d been frequenting the nightclub every full moon to top off the best night of his month with as much mind-blowing sex as he could cram into it. Usually he liked to start the night off with a hunt, which wasn’t actually all that doable in the city because challenging game was pretty much restricted to poodles and shit. Which was totally a no go because it tended to piss the humans off when you ate their dogs (and Alpha Shuester shit bricks when they riled up the two legs).  
  
So usually Puck would shuck his skin and shake the city limits, running to wherever the moon took him, to open spaces and prey and whatever danger might come his way. Sure he knew it was dangerous, they all knew it, but they were made for it. Some wolves might be content to walk on two legs most of the month and ignore the call of the wild on the one day she came calling, but Puck wasn’t into the tame lifestyle. He was as good as the original Big Bad, born a damn wolf, so he’d act like one. He didn’t care who it scared or who hated him for it. If they had a problem with it his wolf had an answer for them.  
  
His disdain for domesticated life had made growing up in Pack Columbus sort of touch and go for him. He’d constantly been in trouble with the local authorities, which, in turn, brought negative attention to the pack, which tended to upset most of his packmates. That hadn’t been enough to settle him. Puck was never one to back down from a challenge and at one time he’d thought he’d rather go rogue than let the humans domesticate him, but the truth of it was rogue life was no place for a wolf either. He didn’t like to think back on those years, and he hated to admit it, but deep down he needed pack as much as any other lycan. He knew better now what it meant to truly be a packmate. He’d survived out there on his own, but only just barely and once he’d almost died after an altercation with Pack Lima that had seen him dragged to their border and left for dead. If not for a couple of Westerville lycans passing through, he would have died. It was for that reason that this particular full moon Puck was not out hunting, but running with the Guard.    
  
He didn’t normally run in Shuester's guard, mainly because it wasn’t a real guard in his opinion and he was too much a renegade in the eyes of his packmates. Shuester refused to give him assignments that might tempt him to act out and Puck had too much pride to beg for his trust.

 

Pack Westerville, now there was a pack with a real fighting force. He’d run with them before and honestly never experienced anything like it. They were practically legendary; every lycan alive knew their story. How the old alpha-major had gone rogue. How he’d made a deal with a black wizard in exchange for the supposed secret to breeding healthy betas. This wizard had cast spells so no one had been able to get in to Dalton, so instead of waiting on rescue and watching more of them die every day, these students, these wolf pups, had banded together and chose a new alpha-major to challenge him. Running with the Westerville guard was like being a knight at the round table, complete with the boy king. There was just no denying you were part of something special.   
  
Puck still owed them a lot, so when Wes had texted him earlier about finding and detaining some convert at Lună Plină he’d agreed, god help him. At first, Blaine and the others were supposed to get there hours ago and they were all going to head over to the convert’s house while Puck ran interference with Shuester to smooth things over if the convert needed force to get out of Columbus.  
  
But it was the full moon, everywhere around the world, people like them were going wild, going _wolf_ , and it was the alpha-major’s job to shepherd them. Blaine had run into delay after delay and now Puck was stuck with the task of finding a horny convert in the middle of a crush, in the middle of the biggest and rowdiest group of subhumans the city had to offer. He’d needed back up, so he’d been forced to go to Shelby for help (no way was he involving Shuester).   
  
Shelby Corcoran was beta-major, Will’s second in command and the only other lycan in the pack with the authority to command guard wolves, though she was not actually mated to him, thankfully (Puck was kind of sweet on her these days). Alpha Will had been courting an omega for longer than anyone could remember and had no interest in finding a beta mate, even if traditionally speaking his mate was supposed to help run the guard and Emma (his pretty red haired omega) was about as capable of that as she was of changing her sex.  
  
Aware of the situation, Puck was under strict orders from Shelby to oversee things and make sure that guild law was upheld and that above all, the convert’s rights were protected. Human or not, he was one of them now, Columbus-born and guild law said he was to be Columbus-bred. Unless, of course, he took a mate from another Pack. Blaine was, of course, pushing for that outcome, but Blaine had no actual rights where the little convert was concerned if he decided he’d rather have nothing to do with him.  
  
Which put Puck in a really nasty place. He owed Westerville, and their alpha-major was pretty hot for this kid. It was the full moon and, since the kid was dancing around in it without a care in the world apparently, one way or another the convert was getting fucked by _someone_ tonight and one way or another it had better be Blaine, or Puck knew someone was going to die. Shelby wouldn’t be at all happy if somebody got their throat crushed because Westerville’s alpha came onto their turf and apparently forgot what the word no meant.  
  
Not going to happen on his watch. Maybe it wasn’t fair to this kid Kurt but Columbus man or not it was in the best interest of all if he just went with Blaine quietly and they sorted out their business elsewhere. His plan was to find him somewhere in this crowd before Blaine got there and people started baring teeth, lure him outside where he could be sent to sleep with a well placed tap on the head and delivered to his Romeo without much fuss. Arthur would have his Gwen, nobody belly up, everybody happy, the end.  
  
“Any sign of him yet?” A female voice hollered above the music and Puck looked down to find Rachel Berry at his elbow. The tiny brunette was one of the youngest members of the guard, but what she lacked in experience she made up for in confidence. Ridiculously annoying level of confidence actually, but there was no getting rid of her as she was Shelby’s cub (the accident of an ill-timed heat in college and a broken elevator) and desperate to prove herself to the mother she’d never known. Puck could understand that he guessed. He knew all about sudden heats between unmated lycans and fathers who just disappeared without looking back.  
  
“No,” he replied turning slightly as a woman brushed against his back in what was clearly a come on. Focus Puckerman. “Is Santana back from checking the bar?”  
  
Before Rachel could even reply, another female appeared from the throng of bodies at his other elbow, this one a leggy Latina, and practically purred at him, “if he’s the lamb chop currently sitting at the bar with no less than three Alpha’s breathing down his neck, then I’d say yeah, he’s at the bar.”

“Three?” Rachel gapped even as Puck was groaning. “And nobody’s fighting yet?”  
  
“He’s got this Vamp hovering over him, plus, you know, they’re at the bar,” Santana explained with a shrug. Ludo, the bartender, was a wizard and a crack shot with a spell. He didn’t stand for nonsense at his bar, not that it was enough to stop a bunch of moon hazy alphas when they wanted something (or in this case, somebody) but that, and the threat of fighting off a vampire on top of things, would be enough to give anyone pause. For a little bit.  
  
“We better move fast then,” Rachel echoed his thoughts.  
  
“Game time, guys,” Puck grinned at them both and the answering smiles he got were wide and devilish.  
  
“Let’s kick some ass!” Rachel exclaimed and Santana rolled her eyes.  
  
“Don’t be a drama queen Berry, there’s no need for violence. It’s not that hard to distract a couple of horny alphas.” With a flip of her dark hair Santana smirked at Rachel’s scowl and sashayed towards the bar. “Watch and learn pup, watch and learn.”  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
 _Screaming in the dark, I howl when we’re apart, drag my teeth across your chest to taste your beating heart. My fingers claw your skin, try to tear my way in. You are the moon that breaks the night for which I have to howl._  
  
Kurt loved this song. Yes it was totally cliché, especially given the location, and the fact that there were two actual werewolves hovering nearby, eagerly watching him sip his cocktail, but he was just drunk enough not to care. That was funny considering that he hadn’t had that much to drink since they’d arrived, common sense said not to get drunk in present circumstances while surrounded by a host of fanged creatures, but that one cocktail seemed to have gone straight to his hea, because it was floating.

  
He was about as on as he’d ever been, an invisible electric current traveling through his blood and charging everything it touched. He felt the pounding beat of the music deep in his belly and his hips twitched in his seat, ready to swing him onto the dance floor.  
  
It was glorious. He felt glorious, and daring. Oh, he could be so daring.  
  
Avery, the first man to ask to buy him a drink, the brunette who couldn’t seem to stop dragging his eyes over the part of his vest where bare chest gleamed, he’d like it if Kurt dared to tease him. So he did. He got a cocktail, he made small talk, he lapped up all trace of the liquor on his lips with kittenish licks and laughed inside because he’d been so worried before.   
  
He wasn’t worried now, couldn’t bring himself to be worried about a thing. Not even about Jake, the guy who had been watching him since he sat down, who’d finally gotten up the courage to butt into his conversation with Avery. Who had growled at the brunette when Avery had grabbed his arm. Who had backed up when Mike appeared at his back with Tina and asked him if there was a problem.  
  
Nope. Kurt had not a problem in the world. He was close in fact, so close to finally getting what he wanted, what he’d wanted all month- and he still couldn’t verbalize what that was, but that didn’t change the fact that his body knew. Tonight he was ready.   
  
Maybe Jake could smell it on him, that’s why he and Avery stayed close. That’s why when the third, a familiar face, had called out his name and Kurt had turned to see him there, Sam’s eyes had gone wide and he’d swallowed so thickly at the sight of him.  
  
“Great song right?” Sam yelled over the music, his eyes unapologetically tracking the sway of his torso as Kurt began to lose himself to the beat.  
  
“Incredibly cheesy,” Kurt quipped without making any move to hide his enjoyment or his desire to get up and dance. Dance, that’s what he wanted. He wanted to be on the dance floor, pressed to Sam’s front and his head thrown back with those unfairly fuckable lips pressed against his collarbone and teeth digging into his shoulder. He heard a low animal whine and his eyes snapped open to find Sam and the others staring at him, looking the very picture of hungry wolves. He’d been leaning back on his stool he realized, his throat bare and presented like an offering.  
  
“You have no idea what you’re doing do you?”  Sam’s voice was rough and low, the arousal Kurt could smell on him audible for everyone else to hear. He liked that, really fucking loved it actually, and it was adorable really how concerned they all were: Sam, Mike, and Tina.

 

They were so worried but it was for no reason. Finally he was past that. Finally, finally, something was going to happen and he just _knew_ that it would be life changing, like coming out of his skin or being born again.  
  
“Mike, I don’t think Kurt’s all right. We should take him home,” Tina was saying to the others, but Kurt didn’t agree at all. No. No walled in house with tiny spaces and no open sky. He bared his teeth at the thought.  
  
“I think he knows what he needs,” Avery rebutted, his eyes locked on Kurt’s throat as if he could will a collar there. “Isn’t that right gorgeous? Let’s get out of here, and I promise, I’ll fuck the wild right out of you.”  
  
There was a hand on his thigh, and then a whirl of movement and the guttural sound of growls as Avery was wrenched away from him. Sam placed his body between the confrontation that was happening between the snarling lycan and Mike, whose teeth Kurt was seeing for the first time as they gleamed in the amber light, and he all but hissed at the lycan.  
  
“Back off!” Mike was warning him even as there was movement on Kurt’s other side. Jake. He didn’t worry about it. Mainly because he wasn’t worried about anything right now and also because Sam saw it and was immediately there between them.  
  
“You too pal, tonight, it’s no.”  
  
Jake didn’t seem to like that at all.  
  
“Yeah right, like I’m just going to let you walk out with him pretty boy. Why not let him decide?”  
  
Kurt started chuckling.  
  
“Forget it! You know as well as I do he can’t consent right now,” Sam scoffed and Kurt giggled into his glass.  
  
“I don’t know,” Kurt purred at him, letting himself indulge in the sight of Sam’s almost too perfect body and that wicked mouth. “I’m finding _you_ really charming right now.”  
  
Sam’s eyes dilated and Kurt could actually smell it when his testosterone kicked up a notch. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, he decided. He wanted all of that energy, all of that unbridled alpha he could smell on him. That’s what he needed, what the others hadn’t had, and if only Sam would give it to him...  
  
But Sam only tensed up, shaking his head like someone coming up from water, and leaning as far away from him as he could without giving Jake any opening to get to him. Not fair. Not what he needed. Kurt heard himself whining again. He huffed in frustration and took a giant swallow of his drink.  
  
That feeling inside of pressure, of needing to burst out of his skin, it was only getting worse and he wanted release. Sam’s eyes were still locked on Jake, but Kurt’s eyes were all for him. He didn’t care about anything else. He needed it. Did Sam have any idea how much he _needed_ it? He could cry he needed it so bad, roll over on his belly and beg, but he wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t do that. It wasn’t safe. He wasn’t _weak_ , just in need and Sam had what he needed. This wasn’t something he could take though, but something Sam had to give. He’d give it to him. Kurt knew he wanted to. He had to make Sam want it as bad as he did, make him want it so bad he’d pin Kurt down and rip him open and release the howling tempest inside him. He wanted that.  
  
So really there was nothing to do but to go get it.   
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
 _Be careful of the curse that falls on young lovers. It starts so soft and sweet then turns them to hunters. A man who is pure at heart, and says his prayers by night, can still become a wolf when the autumn moon is bright_  
  
Blaine was not okay.


	5. Nightmare

_Be careful of the curse that falls on young lovers. It starts so soft and sweet then turns them to hunters. A man who is pure at heart, and says his prayers by night, can still become a wolf when the autumn moon is bright_  
  
Blaine was not okay. He might have been young but he’d gone through many a full moon and experienced his fair share of hormonal surges, especially during the onset of puberty. He’d learned earlier than most—and recently harder than he’d ever have liked to imagine— the price of losing oneself to instinct. As Alpha-Major it was his duty to be more than an animal, to always be able to keep the others safe and when it came to the full moon, a lot of that job included keeping them safe from themselves.

It was exhausting work shepherding an entire community of beings who had the potential to all revert back to the most unruly of adolescent behaviors in a single night, and it wasn’t at all simplified by the outside threat of Hunters and less professional (but no less deadly) human zealots who were out looking to engage a lycan in a fight, for whatever reason they felt justified it.

He was a capable leader, but perhaps more importantly he was blessed to have the best guard in Westerville’s history. They had risen together to overthrow the previous alpha, they were brothers in every way that counted, their bonds forged in war and their communication with each other seamless. There wasn’t a lycan in Westerville that didn’t want the honor of being a guard wolf, and though he had accepted many to boost their ranks, he was close to none so much as he was the men who had been beside him when they’d challenged his father. They’d been just boys then, but they were grown now and well-practiced in handling moon driven chaos.

He had guards strategically sweeping all areas of their territory. Within seconds of any altercation Blaine knew not only what was happening but where and how many wolves were required to respond. Even now he, Wes, and David were circling the south border of the wood where Trent had sent out an alert that he’d caught the scent of men. His duty that night, if not easy, should have at least felt familiar, but nothing did, because never in all his years of full moons had he suffered through one mid-courtship.

He knew the biology of it all, how his body was tuned to Kurt’s, how every cell in that body was now charged to imprint on Kurt’s and his natural instinct was to see it through. Kurt’s body would fit with his and his mind would match his. He didn’t need his biology to tell him that. Kurt had been his best friend when they’d been separated by species. He’d be Blaine’s everything now that he was a man again. Kurt was _mate_. But Kurt was very far away and Blaine wanted to get to him.

He couldn’t stop thinking about how Kurt’s body was ready for the change, how he’d need to let his wolf free or expel the energy some other way. He’d want to be dominated, but not easily—no beta’s submission wasn’t granted based on an alpha’s status alone. Betas had status of their own; betas wanted rank as much as any other wolf and would not be dominated unless their opponent wrested control from them. That’s what they wanted. Kurt would want to let some stranger pull him apart, let some stranger touch what was _his_.

‘ _Blaine!’_

Blaine yelped as a sharp pain in his foreleg broke his concentration. His cry quickly turned into a snarl as he leapt away from the attack, bristling his pelt and baring his teeth in warning as his brain slowly catalogued that he was still alone with Wes and David and that it was Wes who had bitten him. His second had just bitten him because he’d been growling at the thought of someone else touching Kurt, openly growling when they were trying to sneak up on humans that may or may not have come into their territory with the intent to hunt.

A large helping of embarrassment flooded his belly and perhaps it was the moon that flooded his veins or the aggravation of being pulled somewhere and being unable to answer that pull, but he was in no mood to feel stupid on top of everything else. Where normally such audacity from Wes would have been dismissed by a long history of friendship, he didn’t feel like letting it go now.

He let Wes and David see the full length of his teeth, crowding the other black pelted wolf until their muzzles were only inches apart. Wes would have to choose quickly, submit or fight.

_‘Don’t do that!’_ he snarled between their minds. _‘You want my attention you use my name. Don’t bite me unless you want a fight, Montgomery.’_

_‘Easy. Easy,’_ Wes said as he crouched with his rump tucked down and tail tucked under. The submissive display went a long way to soothe Blaine’s rankled nerves, but he still felt that maddening pull on all his senses—the frustrating certainty that Kurt would slip away if he wasn’t by his side to keep the dark from swallowing him. Wes nuzzled and licked at his muzzle, easing the tension out of Blaine’s body, as he apologized softly to him. Blaine gazed ahead, accepting the display of respect and trying not to feel embarrassed by his slip in control.

_‘Sorry, that was stupid,’_ Wes said as he rubbed his head against Blaine’s side affectionately. _‘It’s been a long time since you were so affected by the moon. What’s up?’_

_‘Kurt,’_ Blaine offered in reply, already deciding to get back to business and see it done as soon as possible. He lifted his nose to the wind and the others followed suit.‘ _Let’s finish this already.’_ He wanted Kurt so badly, but the pack had to come first.

When he was focused the humans were easy enough to find. Luckily they were not a pair of experienced hunters, just a couple of drunk men with guns who had it in mind to score a werewolf pelt for bragging rights.

They were easily stalked, easily surrounded and easily done away with. It wasn’t the first time any of them had ever killed a man, nor would it be the last. This was their land, and here the only law was the law they made. Humans knew that. Those men had come there with the intent to kill, and if  Blaine let them survive they’d only be back, and some other time they might succeed.

But later, as he was hosing the blood off his body, he couldn’t help but wonder what Kurt would say if he could see the circle of men dousing themselves outside of Dalton, if he’d been witness to the brutal display.

The word ‘monster’ was the only one that came to mind.

-*-*-

“Is there a problem here, gentlemen?” a rough voice demanded from the bar, and Kurt took his eyes off of Sam long enough to take note of the man behind it. An older guy, somewhere between his fifties and early sixties, peppered hair and wearing all black but for a gold earring in one ear in the shape of a fang.

Before any of them could answer their attention was drawn to a woman pushing her way from the crowd who was laughing as if the idea of trouble starting was the most ridiculous she’d ever heard. Women had never been Kurt’s thing exactly, but even he could objectively say that this one was gorgeous. Long legged and wearing the tightest (not to mention shortest) red dress he’d ever seen on a human body she drew the gaze of every man she passed like flies to honey. Judging by the smug smirk plastered to her painted lips she knew it too.

“No problem here, Ludo, just a couple of alphas fighting over scraps,” she said as she sidled up to the bar. Her nonchalance was so feigned Kurt almost rolled his eyes. Even though she’d just called him scraps he had to give it to her; she had to know that leaning against the bar like that highlighted her backside and accentuated the length of her legs. “What do you think Berry?” Tossing her long dark hair she addressed someone behind them, and the crowd parted yet again as another woman joined her.

This one was smaller in stature, and noticeably less confident, but she mustered up an enticing smile and did a fair job imitating her companion’s hauteur as she directed a question only an idiot would think was actually for her friend at the drooling mouths behind them, “Does this mean nobody’s going to keep us company?”

Kurt couldn’t exactly say what he felt when Avery and Jake drifted towards the pair. He’d already decided he didn’t want them, even if they had been flattering, so he wasn’t upset by their attentions being snatched away so quickly. They didn’t have what he needed and he didn’t like some of the things they’d said, though he couldn’t pin down specifics at the moment.

He wanted Sam, and when he looked at the blond man and found him staring at the first woman with consideration he felt every hair on his body raise. He could smell Sam’s interest and the scent made his stomach roil, his nails pressing to his palms as he staved off the burning urge to scratch something. No, not something but _someone,_ he realized as the Latina laughed again. When he looked at her she was looking right back at him.

“I’d say that’s up to these boys here,” she purred in response to the brunette’s question, a hand roughing up Avery’s hair. Her attention stayed with Kurt, her eyes boring into him with intent. Perhaps that was why he imagined her voice filling his head, each lilting note dripping condescension.

‘ _Look at you with your doe eyes._ _You’re in so way over your head, Lamb Chop. I like a good show as much as the next gal, but listening to you cry_ afterwards _would seriously kill my buzz. So why don’t you run along and let Aunty Tana deal with these guys.”_

Kurt didn’t realize he’d reached for Sam until his hand was pressed against his chest, pushing him away from the woman without taking his eyes off of her. Eyes on the enemy, he thought to himself, his breathing clogging his ears as everything seemed to get heavier in his head. His skin was still itching as if it was riddled with live wires, the feeling moving quickly from mildly irritating to downright uncomfortable. He heard someone whimper, him he thought, as a wave of dizziness overtook him. He leaned against Sam’s solid weight to catch his breath and was momentarily distracted by the rush of scent that filled his nose.

Cologne… deodorant… cloyingly sweet. Sweat… skin… salty with a hint of musk. Alpha…. darker, pungent, spicy… hot. It reached right into his gut and pulled, everything prickling and sensitized until he thought someone might have poured hot liquid over his abdomen.

He felt hands on his waist, Sam’s hands holding him tightly. Sam’s nose nuzzling his ear and down his neck, breathing deeply as he shuddered against Kurt’s back. Sam’s hardness was pressing against his ass, right where he wanted him and Kurt let out a little sigh of relief.

 

‘ _Well you certainly don’t need flagging lessons.’_ At the sound of the woman’s voice his eyes snapped open to find hers again, staring at him with mild irritation.

‘ _I’m not scraps,’_ he thought, and it did not disturb him at all to imagine she had understood his warning and that her answering laugh was in response.

_‘Point taken_ , _Lamb Chop.’_

He smiled at her then, baring all his teeth, and she grinned back with the barest hint of begrudging respect. _‘But you’re still way in over your head.’_

Aloud he heard her say to Sam, “You sure you want a piece of that pie, Lips? Doe face over there is so green you could mow him.” With a salacious grin she added, “Maybe that’s exactly what you had in mind. A little dubious consent never _really_ hurt anybody did it?”

Sam stiffened against his back and Kurt frowned. Right at that moment Avery seemed to decide he’d had enough of the back and forth. He slid his arm around the woman’s waist and pulled her in tight, pressing his nose just below her ear, much as Sam had been doing to him moments before.

“Let him have him. I promise I’m more than enough Alpha to keep you busy, sweetheart,” he growled into her neck and Kurt saw the woman’s nose wrinkle and her eyes roll with disgust before they caught his again.

‘ _Lesson one, convert, never think with your dick. Any moron with half a nostril could smell that I’m an alpha._ ’

But to Avery she gushed, “Sounds good, Baby. Why don’t we take this somewhere more private?”

Kurt watched as the woman led Avery away ~~,~~ and her companion sashayed away with Jake in tow, only letting himself relax when the two women had disappeared out of sight.

Sam was still tense against him, but he still had his arms around Kurt and that was really good. That was great. But what would be absolutely perfect was if he could get rid of his clothes. He was so flushed. When had things gotten so hot? He rolled his shoulders, shivering at the sensation of air against his slick skin as his vest slipped down his shoulders. How easy would it be to slip the whole thing off? He had the strangest idea in his head… what if he shrugged out of his vest, peeled off his oh so fashionable but much too confining pants and let the air touch every last inch of his body.

“Kurt, I think we should go now,” someone said with a touch to his arm. Familiar. Female. Smelled like jasmine perfume. Tina. Home? Home was inside. Four walls. Confining. Alone. No Sam.

He whimpered and pulled away from her, pressing back into Sam. The other male’s body was hot against his skin but Kurt couldn’t bring himself to mind. He craved that heat, wanted to burn in it and see what rose from the ashes. Tina reached for him again and Sam finally looked up from Kurt’s neck and growled at her.

“You should leave them be,” Mike murmured to Tina, drawing her away from the pair she was gaping at. She turned her shocked gaze to him and glowered.

“Are you insane?! I’m not—”

 “—going to interfere with a lycan in heat?” Mike cut her off. “Damn right you’re not, unless you want to lose an arm.”

“You think I care about getting hurt when someone’s about to drag my best friend off?” Tina hissed at him. Turning back to Sam she shouted over the pounding music, “Just back off, okay! We’re not letting you take him out of here in this condition.”

“Tina!” Mike pulled her back when she tried to get between them again.

“Let go of me, Michael!”

“No!” He shook her until she went still in his arms, staring up at him with the first hint of fear Kurt had ever seen her direct towards him. The buzzing in his head seemed to dull for a moment, his senses honing on the smell of fear, his hackles raising as he stared at the conflict brewing between his best friend and the vampire neither of them really knew.

Mike smelled like danger. Why had he ignored that? Foolish.

“Michael?” Tina blinked up at Mike, staring into eyes that had gone cold and red, the effort to keep her spine straight despite her trembling obvious to all.

“Listen to me, Tina,” Mike whispered quietly, though Kurt seemed able to pick up on every word. “He is your friend, so I’ll try and stop anyone harassing him. But no way am I going to try and cock block when he’s clearly made his choice. You will accept his decision, no matter how reckless, and you will not get yourself injured on his account. Do you understand?”

She seemed trapped by his gaze, her eyes wide and glassy as she stared into them, nodding weakly in accent as he tugged her away. Over her shoulder Mike glared at him, as if he was blaming Kurt for her upset. Kurt wasn’t thinking about any of that. He was replaying the vision of Mike’s eyes glowing red, of Tina going soft in his arms and all his senses shrieking danger at him.

“Didn’t she see that?” he heard himself wonder aloud. More intentionally he turned to Sam and insisted heatedly, “He did something. What did he do?!”

Sam blinked at him for a moment, then shook his head as if to clear it of fog before he answered. “Glamor? All vamps can do it. It’s how they get blood without their prey making a fuss. You could snatch a person right out of their home if you wanted to, long as it looked like they were willing to go with you.”

“How exactly does any sane human being let someone they love go off with a creature whose eyes are glowing like a fucking jack-o-lantern?” Kurt demanded to know, fear for his friend elevating as he watched them disappearing into the crowd.

Sam considered him for a moment with a puzzled frown.

“Well... humans can’t see through the glamor, Kurt, remember?”

Everything in Kurt went cold.

“Kurt?” Sam reached for his arm but Kurt stepped away. He couldn’t get trapped in Sam’s heat again. Not with Tina disappearing with someone dangerous. Not when he had to hunt.

“I can,” he whispered to himself. He could. He’d seen through a vampire’s glamor, felt his threat from the very start, and humans weren’t supposed to be able to do that. He didn’t know what that meant…

_Yes_ , _you do._ The thought came unbidden. His own this time.

“Of course you can. You’d hardly be lycan if you—Hey!” Sam yelled after him as Kurt began to stride away. “Where are you going?”

He couldn’t answer that. His mind wasn’t clear enough. First there had been panic, overwhelming paralyzing panic that had almost swept him under, but then there had been instinct. It was so much easier to surrender control to them.

Protect: Tina. Vampire: Hunt.

Nothing was complicated on the instinctual level.

~*~*~

Michael had known from the instant he met Kurt that taking him along with them to Lună Plină was a mistake. He tried not to be judgmental. He, unlike his sire, was a firm believer in social progress. No longer did humans regard their people as ‘gods’, and no longer were they protected by superstition. Fact was humans used to accept the supernatural, even if that acceptance was based on ignorance and fear, they’d once been open to the idea of higher beings and forces not explained within the parameters of science. 

Once vampires had lived openly, ruled openly, but the world had changed, and the only way vampires would have a place in it now was if they adapted. Humans weren’t so bad, in fact much about them was fascinating and Mike frequently enjoyed their company for more than just dinner.

Take Tina: beautiful, razor sharp, unfailingly kind and frustratingly intuitive when a guy was trying not to give away that he was a separate species but would she please consider going out to dinner anyway. Mortal men and women were all well and good, easily controlled if things got out of hand. Like tonight.

He hated doing it, the whole glamor thing, it was hopelessly archaic. It made him feel too much like his sire and the oldest members of his coven, who were constantly prattling on about thralls and vampire superiority. He didn’t want some mindless servant whose blood he drank and body he used. He wanted Tina—body, heart, and soul—and if she came with complications so be it.

A lycan best friend was definitely high on the list of complications. His sire wasn’t going to exactly be thrilled that he’d taken a human lover, but it was common enough amongst vampires. Thralls after all. It helped that Mike had no idea if he wanted to make her his Bride yet, it was a bit early for such huge decisions, but one thing he knew without a doubt would cause major waves in the coven, was the knowledge that he was now willingly consorting with a lycan. Not just consorting. _Protecting_.

They’d just left a club full of witnesses, and he didn’t kid himself that his sire wouldn’t hear about him getting between a couple of wolves and some bitch who was so hot for it he’d been flagging for all and kingdom to come do something about it.

He winced, thinking to himself he should probably rethink calling Tina’s friend a bitch. He’d only ever heard lycans referred to with derogatory language in the coven, but that after all was the old way. It had been centuries since his kind warred with lycans and he didn’t believe all of that ‘natural enemy’ hoopla. He’d never gotten to know an actual lycan, and it was only fair to give Kurt a chance to disprove all of the negative things he’d grown up hearing about his kind. 

Still, he’d have appreciated a little warning from Tina that the infamous ‘best friend Kurt’ was one of his people’s greatest enemies. Truthfully it had rankled a bit that he’d never been able to glean anything of her friend’s true nature from Tina’s thoughts before. His sire would say he’d allowed his affection for the human woman to dull his senses.

Then it had confused him at the club when Kurt had started so recklessly flagging, practically presenting himself to every alpha in the room. Did he want someone to die? And then Tina had been so worried about him, and she didn’t seem to think Kurt had wanted any of those guys so what was he supposed to have done?

Let some beast carry off her best friend?

But then the blond one had come and Kurt had seemed to want him, but Tina had _still_ insisted on intervening, and that was just fucking nuts. You didn’t get between hormone crazed wolves who wanted each other. That was just basic common sense. Either Tina didn’t have any—which wasn’t true from what he knew of her—or she didn’t know Kurt was lycan. Which would have to mean either Kurt hadn’t come out to her or Kurt himself didn’t know he was lycan… which would explain a lot actually.

Mike sighed.

The poor kid was in for a rude awakening come morning.

“Are you leaving, Mikey?” a voice chimed from behind them as they reached the door and Mike looked back to find a Brittany, a blond vampiress from his coven, at his elbow.

“Yeah, Britt, I’m going to get Tina home. I think we’ve both had enough for the night.”

Brittany nodded, following them out the door and into the cool night air.

“Is she friends with the puppy at the bar?” the blond female asked, and Mike knew she was talking about Kurt because he’d had many years to get used to Brittany’s interesting way of viewing things. She was a beautiful woman, golden as any angel, but in a truly unfortunate way almost as innocent and just as removed from reality. “You got pretty upset at those other puppies trying to take him home. So he must be hers.”

“He isn’t anything to Tina,” he found himself snapping without much thought. _‘Woah, Chang, tone down the possessive jerk’_ he scolded himself. He wasn’t going to play the fanged caveman in a cape, not with Tina. Brittany was pouting at him, her confusion written all over her face and he sighed. “What I mean to say, Britt, is that they’re just friends. Kurt’s his own person.”

Which was exactly why he was free to hump whoever the hell he wanted without interference. Mike would see Tina home safely and then he was going to have a talk with her little friend about mixing her up in dangerous situations when he was so clearly out of control everybody in a five mile radius could scent it.

“Why did you thrall her?” Brittany asked, breaking Mike out of his thoughts. The blond was holding Tina’s hand now as they walked, staring at the almost sightless woman at his side with such a stark look of hurt that Mike felt like someone had jabbed him with a pin.  He knew Brittany’s unique history, he knew also that she wouldn’t get that not all vampires used glamors to hurt humans. Sometimes it was about protection.

“She’s not hurt Britt, she—”

“How do you know if she’s hurt?” the blonde demanded, a steely edge entering her otherwise soft voice. “She can’t tell you. You’ve never been a thrall. You have no idea if it hurts or not.”

He had nothing to say to that. He knew it didn’t hurt physically, but Brittany was right on the account that he’d never been glamored before. He had no idea what it was like, while she on the other hand very much did. He wasn’t going to tell her she was wrong.

“You’re being a bully Mike, and I don’t like it.” She said with all the confidence of a woman who knew her words had weight. “Her puppy isn’t going to like it either.”

It was at that exact moment they heard an agonized scream. It came from behind them, somewhere back by the club, and it was such a horrifying sound that it raised the hair on Mike’s arm. He was battle ready within seconds. This was the full moon after all, they were never alone in the dark and there were always Hunters about. Instinctively he pulled Tina and Brittany behind him, searching wildly through the dark for a sign of any threat.

“Mike?” Britt breathed against his back. “I think someone’s hurt.”

_No kidding_ , he thought as another scream rent the night air.

-*-*-

Kurt followed the scent of jasmine out of the club. Outside it was stronger, a hundred other scents no longer clogging his nose and interfering with his hunt. Outside the moon was bright and it splashed over his skin like cooling water. For one moment he sighed in relief, every cell in his body electrified and swelling outward as if he were power personified. This was right. He’d been needing this for so long.

He was instinct. He was wolf. He was no longer contained by human skin.

Then he hurt all over.

Fire licked across his skin and sank into his bones. He crashed down and hit pavement as it raced through him. Terrified he hugged himself—tried vainly to hold the pressure inside. He writhed as his parts began to bend and buckle beneath the pressure—his bolts rattling and pipes snapping like crumbling machinery.

_‘Somebody help me!’_ he screamed. Inside his head. Maybe aloud. He couldn’t hear anything past the terrible grinding of gears. There was something looming over him, lunging at him, tearing at him. He screamed again, as much over the pain consuming his body as any fear of the creature currently attacking him.

Even crippled with pain his survival instinct kicked in, and he twisted away from the thing—he couldn’t see what it was because of the bright spots in front of his eyes—trying desperately to get away from the claws he felt raking his skin, adding to the pain.

‘ _Sorry, kid, sorry’_ a voice he’d never heard before was suddenly in his mind. _‘But I’ve got to get your clothes off.’_

There were more scratches, the sound of ripping—so much ripping and it hurt so terribly bad—he was going to pass out.

There was cool air against his skin, a moment of brilliant relief, and Kurt sobbed. Then everything spun out of control for the second time and he closed his eyes to ride out the final wave of agony. For a moment the world was brilliant and white behind his eyelids and he just floated above it all, above the pain, above consciousness.

When he came back down it was slowly, groggily, his senses honing in on something licking his face.

_‘Shit, kid. You scared the fuck out of me.’_ A voice was saying. The licking continued. _‘You’re new to this so I’m telling you now, don’t ever fight the change. It hurts like a fucker.’_

Kurt opened his eyes and saw an impossible sight. There was a dog—no a wolf! There was a brown wolf leaning over him, licking his face and… talking to him. He was hearing it! So not wolf then, at least not an ordinary one. Lycan, his brain supplied even as instinct had him scrambling away from the animal.

But wait…. Everything was wrong. Nothing was as it should have been. He was too low to the ground, his center of gravity was off, he had more limbs than he should have had, he was crashing…

He whimpered as he went sprawled against the ground, his heart racing in his chest and his breath coming in fast pants… he could feel his tongue, so much longer than it should have been… touching dirty pavement as he gasped for breath.

_‘Whoa whoa whoa, calm down, Kurt, just take it easy alright.’_ The brown wolf nuzzled against his side, an action that probably was supposed to be comforting. But seeing as it was coming from a wolf it decidedly wasn’t.

_‘Don’t think like a human,’_ the wolf said. _‘Trust your instincts. They know what to do.’_

Kurt really didn’t want to. He wanted to curl into a ball and cry, but that wouldn’t make the nightmare go away. Terrified as he was he still recognized the ingrained need to get up and fight. It was all he’d ever been taught to do, the only resource available to him when he’d felt like curling up and giving in. He heard his father’s voice then, talking to the frightened child he’d been then—dressed in black and staring at a grave—the child he’d somehow become again. 

_This isn’t the end you know, Kurt. Life’s gonna go on, and you’ve got to get up to meet it. You remember that. Okay? Promise me. Whatever happens you hold your head high and you keep going._

His father had promised to be there whenever he could, but life had taught Kurt early on that he couldn’t always be. Now he was alone in the dark and facing a horrible unknown. He wasn’t going to curl up though, even if he was justified in a little panic. He had no idea what was happening, but instinct had been carrying him all month. He might as well let it carry him to his feet.

Kurt closed his eyes and let go.

-*-*-

The convert had gone still, breathing shallowly, but to all appearances calming down after one of the most brutal changes Puck had ever witnessed. Poor kid. Forced changes were the worst, when instinct battled against will and the body was torn between two commands. They were common with converts and adolescents experiencing their first unguided changes, and Puck had been glad to leave them behind with his protégé days.

_‘You’ll feel better in a minute or two.’_ He assured Kurt, wondering how freaked out the kid had to be after an experience like that. _‘Blaine’s on his way. He’ll explain everything and show you how to change so it doesn’t hurt so bad.’_

Puck wasn’t aware of the exact relationship between Westerville’s alpha and the convert laying at his feet, but he thought that given Blaine’s assurance that this kid was his mate that it had to be pretty favorable, and so he expected the thought of Blaine being there soon to help the kid feel better. He didn’t expect at all for the kid to go stiff, and then to spring to his feet with all the agility of a fucking gazelle.

Gone was the ungainly animal weaving about on coltish legs from moments before, and in his place was a sleek thing of beauty. Kurt’s pelt was a mixture of greys, some of it so light it was silver in the moonlight, and if Puck paid any attention to that sort of thing he might have noticed that Kurt’s coat resembled his eyes when he was human. But he didn’t, and the only thing that could be said about Kurt’s eyes now was that they were electric blue with nothing behind them but one hundred percent animal instinct.

The grey wolf crouched with tail cocked, lips pulled back, fangs bared, ears forward, and eyes wild and threatening. For Puck there was only one answer he could make to such a dominant display, because for one subduing the kid was for his own good. Two, Blaine would be pissed if he let him run off, and third, and most important, he’d be skinned before he couldn’t get a minutes-old convert belly up.

Puck tensed, thrusting his head forward with fangs bared, daring the smaller wolf to get feisty with him, fully expecting the kid to have enough sense not to have a go at him.

But to his surprise the grey wolf lunged forward. Kurt’s jaws snapped so close to Puck’s face that he pulled back instinctively, so that when the weight of the other wolf hit him he was off balance. He snarled in indignant furry but could do little to deflect the teeth latching onto his neck. Lucky for him Kurt mostly had a grip on skin and scruff, because if he’d had a solid hold on bone Puck had no doubt the grey wouldn’t have hesitated a second to snap his neck. Even still, he wasn’t going to sit around and wait for the kid to get a better grip.

He twisted, paws coming up to rake at his opponent, trying to wrest himself out of the grip of Kurt’s powerful jaws; but Kurt, driven by wild instinct, was relentless in his attack. He wrestled Puck off balance, using the full force of his weight and that uncompromising grip to force him downwards. Puck was an experienced fighter, he knew that resisting that pull would result in Kurt’s teeth tearing through skin, blood loss, and with no telling how deep they would go he couldn’t let that happen.

He let gravity pull him downwards, falling onto his side. On the ground he was vulnerable and they both knew it, but the one plus side to allowing himself to fall was that Kurt had to let go and try for a new bite. Puck wasn’t in the mood to give him the chance, and didn’t waste any time kicking out with his paws, raking at whatever piece of Kurt he could get to, and throwing everything he had into rolling back on his feet. He would never be quite sure what went wrong.

Nails raked down his muzzle to his shoulder and he yelped with pain, giving the grey wolf just enough time to lunge on top of him, paws pinning him to the concrete and teeth inches from his exposed throat.

_Jesus Christ!_

Now Puck was a fighter but he wasn’t looking to die, and with Kurt not in his right mind he knew that if he took the challenge any further the other wolf would kill him. So he did what any sane wolf would do. He folded the paws across his chest and lifted his hind quarters, as submissive as he could possibly make himself.

_‘Okay! Okay,’_ he yelled, trying to reach the human part of Kurt even as his body spoke to the wolf. _‘I can’t hurt you. I’m down for the count, dude, see?’_

He stayed still even after Kurt closed his jaws, knowing better than to move a muscle as the other wolf licked over his throat and muzzle, even his genitals, marking him in a way that would signal to all others that he was subordinate. Which was utterly humiliating, yeah, but between humiliation and death he’d literally take his licks.

Satisfied that he was properly cowed Kurt sprang off him, sprinting off into the dark, leaving Puck to gather his pride and try to figure out just what the hell he was going to do now.

How had that even happened? Yeah, the kid had gotten the drop on him, but, Jesus Christ, most converts were scared silly and meek as puppies. Only Anderson would try to mate with a guy whose inner wolf could rival Cujo. Thank god nobody had been there to witness that train wreck. The situation was still salvageable. He’d go out back behind the bar, hose himself off, get the girls, track Kurt down and truss him up to deliver to his fucking Romeo. But not before he dominated the kid and reminded them both who was the number one big bad here.

He rolled to his feet, and to his horror he caught a scent he’d missed during the distraction of the fight. He groaned even as Santana walked towards him with clicking heels.

“Do we want to talk about how you just let Lamb Chop make you his bitch,” she cackled. “Or should we talk about the fact that his alpha is here to collect?”

A bolt of unease went through him.

_‘Anderson’s here?’_ He asked, sticking nose to wind and trying to scent out an answer before she could give it.

“The boy king has landed,” Santana confirmed, doing nothing to hide her glee at his expense. “Strung tighter than a pair of Berry’s panties, I might add. And in case you didn’t know, Puckerman, you smell like you just took a roll in the hay with his Guinevere.”

Fuck. Nothing in Puck’s life was ever simple was it?

-*-*-

Brittany insisted they find out who was screaming so horribly in the dark. Mike had that feeling in his gut, the one that warned him of trouble to come, and his skin was practically prickling with danger. He wanted Tina nowhere near danger, but Tina was Coven and if he left her he knew she would only investigate by herself.

He made Brittany promise to stay where she was with Tina, where it was well lit, and to wait for him. If he wasn’t back in five she was to take Tina to his home and stay with her until she had word from him.

It didn’t take him long to find the source of the screams. Just a little ways outside the club a man had collapsed, and it didn’t take more than a second for Mike to recognize Kurt. If he’d had any doubt before that Kurt was newly converted it was finished now. No born lycan fought a change like that. He watched as another wolf came and helped him out of his clothes, watched as the change consumed him and replaced man with beast.

He thought about leaving then, allowing Kurt’s own kind to sort him out now that he’d safely changed, but something held him in place. He frowned when the two began to growl at each other, stiffing when grey wolf lunged at brown, wondering if he was going to have to intervene in order to prevent Tina’s immeasurably reckless friend from getting his throat crushed.

But no, the brown wolf quickly conceded the fight to Kurt and with a little ritual licking it was over and done, the grey wolf tearing off into the night with purpose. Something about that sent off bells in his head.

Mike didn’t know much about lycan converts, but if they were anything like fledgling vampires they were a disoriented pile of instincts. Kurt hadn’t looked overwhelmed by a million and one instincts roaring to the surface, if anything he’d fought with single minded purpose far beyond what many born and bred lycans managed on the full moon. What set of instincts could be driving him?

Tina. As his thoughts turned towards the woman they had been so happy to dwell on the past three months, a sinking suspicion came to him. Kurt was lycan, only he hadn’t known it before tonight. Mike was a vampire and the legend was they were natural enemies, able to detect each other even in disguise, and naturally disposed to reacting to the other with violence. Tina was Kurt’s best friend and Kurt had been feet away when Mike had placed a glamor on her and took her from the bar against her will. Wolves bonded deeply and destroyed anything that infringed on their ‘territory’.

Kurt would be going after Tina who was only a few streets away, and when he found her it would be with an unfamiliar vampire.

Mike started to run. As he ran he screamed Brittany’s name, not caring who overheard him. Kurt’s instincts wouldn’t allow him to be distracted from his hunt and anyone else who was out and about at this time of night on this particular night knew the rules of engagement. Best not to stick your nose in what wasn’t your business.

-*-*-

Mike was gone and Brittany was bored. She’d have been better if she could talk to his girlfriend, who had been interesting the few times Brittany had encountered her before. But Mike hadn’t wanted her to know he was a vampire then so he’d whisked her away before Brittany could say too much to her.

Which was really aggravating because Tina had been nicer to her than any of the other girls in the coven, and it wasn’t like Brittany didn’t know how to keep a secret. She definitely couldn’t talk to her now. Mike had locked her up inside and when you were locked up inside your head there was no way to talk to anybody, Brittany knew. She’d spent years locked up inside her own head, learning to talk to herself. Sometimes she still did.

“Don’t worry.” She rubbed Tina’s arm. “I think Mike locked you up because he was worried your puppy would bite you. I have a cat who sometimes scratches me when I try and stop him from smoking.” Tina didn’t respond, but Brittany knew that didn’t mean she couldn’t hear, and if she couldn’t that was okay too. Brittany was still getting used to people actually being able to hear her.

“Lord Tubbington belonged to my Sire. He’s a nice kitty but his old master wasn’t really a nice man,” she recounted for the brunette, kicking at a crack in the pavement. “He wouldn’t have liked you, because you’re human. But, I don’t know, maybe he would because your hair shines like river water. He said he liked mine because it reminded him of cornfields. He used to climb inside my window at night and tell me that.” She thought that Tina might be surprised inside so she added, “I used to be human and live in a house with my parents, I think. Maybe we even would have been friends.”

She smiled at the other woman, pressing a kiss to her cheek just in case she was listening and had said yes, that maybe if they’d been human at the same time they might have been friends. She couldn’t remember if she’d had friends or not before the coven, couldn’t even remember if she’d been human, but she thought she must have been once because everyone said she’d been converted. She sighed, feeling the same hopelessness she always felt when she thought of that word and what it was supposed to mean.

“Whatever you do, don’t let Mike convert you. When you’re converted other vampires think something’s wrong with you. They whisper about you and keep reminding you how human you used to be.” She petted Tina’s silky black hair and thought it would be a shame for the woman to change a single thing about herself. “Only you won’t be anymore. You’ll forget who you are and go crazy if the blood doesn’t take. That’s what they say happened to me. I don’t think I’m crazy but… how would I know?”

She started to giggle to herself because that, there, was actually pretty funny. It was good to laugh. She liked to laugh and to dance because it made the sadness so much lighter. Some days it simply floated away if she danced long enough. Nobody liked being sad all the time, Brittany especially. It was selfish probably, but a tiny part of her hoped Mike did decide to convert Tina. Then she wouldn’t be the only convert in the coven, the only vampire people called crazy behind their hands. She’d have a real friend then.

_Brittany!_ A tiny voice, carried by wind called her name. For a moment she thought it might be Tina, calling out from behind her glass eyes—she used to imagine calling out and reaching someone when she’d been a thrall—but she didn’t want to think thoughts like that. They made her brain feel hot and he insides start shaking in ways they shouldn’t.

No, that was an actual voice, getting stronger with each call, shouting her name from somewhere back by the club, Mike’s voice.

She might have been crazy, but she knew that Mike would only be screaming for her if something were wrong. She grabbed Tina’s hand because she was still locked up and she would get hurt if Brittany left her by herself. She didn’t have time to think of anything else because she heard a growl that made her blood freeze.

She turned slowly, because when the wolves were angry you weren’t supposed to move fast, and peered curiously into the darkness. There was indeed a wolf crouched there, a grey one with bright blue eyes that were staring right at her.

_It’s Tina’s puppy_ , she thought to herself as she gazed into the wolf’s blue eyes. She never forgot a pair of eyes. Eyes were like windows. If you looked closely, sometimes you could see people screaming behind them. Of course nobody ever bothered to look that closely. But then again they didn’t know what it was like to be trapped.

_Trapped_ , _that’s a good word for this_ , she thought to herself. And then she giggled because that, there, that was actually pretty funny.


	6. Wolf Song

The wolf wanted Tina. Brittany knew because not once since she’d turned to find him stalking her in the dark, had the wolf taken his eyes off of her. _She_ was the threat, the target, and not the human woman beside her. She’d never liked dogs, she thought, and like it often did, her mind opened up and a piece of memory came spinning from out of its depths with startling clarity. Sire had kept another girl, a puppy with white fur a lot like this one. Her name had been Kala, and she’d been a pretty girl like Britt. Sire liked his girls pretty, but he _loved_ them terrified. There was a science to fear, he’d insisted, and only the truly brave tried to understand it. Would she like to experiment?

Yes. The answer was always yes. There was no such thing as no for thralls, for pretty girls who were played with like pretty dolls.

_Nowhere to run pretty girl._

She blinked away the tears pricking her eyes, blinked away the memory of Sire’s voice, and then she blinked away the fear. She’d always been more than a doll. No matter what anyone thought, her head wasn’t actually empty, just a little cracked. She knew, for instance, that the only reason she wasn’t dead yet, was that the wolf in front of her wanted Tina. Tina was too close to Brittany and any attack to her would mean possibly injuring Tina. The stalemate wouldn’t last forever though, she would have to move; they both knew that. For him, there was only the hunt and that meant for her there were only seconds. Seconds to make a choice, she knew only a few of them had passed since she’d turned to find the wolf there, but time was dragging inside her head like someone had left it to drip like an leaky faucet.

She had to choose. She knew what the smart thing to do was here. Tina’s friend wouldn’t want to hurt her, so as long as she kept Tina between herself and all those teeth…

But she couldn’t ask Tina to protect her while she was glamored, and Brittany couldn’t take that choice away from her.

She gave Tina’s hand a squeeze in hers, feeling calmer now that she’d made a decision. She supposed she was scared to die— all the signs were there, racing heart, sweaty palms— but the feeling was so familiar to her it was strangely comforting. Fear was just an old friend coming to greet her.

_Are you scared pretty girl?_

No. She remembered for the first time how she used to lie. She’d thought that maybe if she wasn’t scared he’d stop. Sire had always known when she lied.

Brittany leaned into Tina and took a careful look at their surroundings, a last look at a gorgeous sky, and then she turned to her and rested their cheeks together. Tina could see, she could hear, but that didn’t guarantee she’d always remember. Brittany wanted her to remember this.

“Please take care of Michael; he needs someone to help him sometimes. He was really wrong, playing with your mind like this, but he’s not really a bad person.” Bad people were much different. She remembered the white storm now… the white rooms of an institution, the white flashes of cameras and the white noise of hundreds of televisions all reporting the same stories.  

_The police rescued a ten year old girl today, the lone survivor in a string of serial kidnappings… St. Crispin hospital made a startling discovery, and are reporting now that the little girl may have contracted a deadly virus from her parents killer… doctors are saying she’s unlikely to recover from the coma…_

She remembered red. Blood everywhere, splashing up against white walls, throats, coats, and…

She blinked. That had been her Waking Day. She squeezed the bleeding second behind her and fell into a fresh one with new focus. Focus girl, focus. There weren’t many seconds left.

“He’s been so good to me….” She tried again but then she remembered the coven coming to find her. She remembered a circle of strange faces and harsh voices. Defective. Bad blood. Didn’t take right. Clean up time.

_Are you scared pretty girl?_

She’d been so terrified.

“… He saved my life.”

A boy’s face. A boy’s body clinging tightly to hers. A father demanding he let go, a son saying no. Brittany blinked the memories away again, only this time she kept blinking until they had fully receded. One. Two. Three. Silence. That was so much better. The past was the past and here and now she knew what she had to do. She smiled at the woman next to her and pressed a kiss to her cheek.

“Now we’re going to save his. Okay?”

Brittany patted Tina’s cheek softly and then she let everything go. She let go of her control on her body, shedding all pretense of humanity as fangs lengthened and she struck the side of the Asian woman’s throat like a cobra with lightning speed. The bite was shallow but it bled freely. The pain was enough to shatter Mike’s flimsy hold on the woman’s mind, his glamor not having been meant for much more than subduing her out of the club. The smell of blood was enough to incite the wolf to charge, and when he did Brittany was off in a blur of speed knowing that he would follow.

She would lead Tina’s wolf far away so that Mike would not have to fight him, so that Mike would not have to die or kill someone Tina loved. She knew of course that there was a good chance the wolf might catch her. She was fast, faster than any human could ever be, but so were wolves. She was strong but so were they. They were evenly matched in almost every way except one.

She’d vowed never to kill again. The wolf’s only goal was to kill her now that she’d drawn blood. As she hurtled down the darkened streets, the wolf following close behind, she heard the voice of fear again.

_Are you scared pretty girl?_

Yes. But fear had never owned her.

-*-*-*-

Blaine had known the instant they stepped into the club that Kurt wasn’t there. That force that had practically pulled him to the city was still tugging away; his instincts leading him back outside away from the noise and the heat of the club. His body had developed a special ‘Kurt’ setting, and though it could not tell him where Kurt _was_ , it would not let him forget where he was not. He could smell a hundred other sweaty bodies, but not Kurt’s unique cocktail of scents. He could hear a chorus line of voices, but the only thing he noted was how not one belonged to Kurt. The lack of Kurt seemed to roar through the room like a booming canon, and the knowledge had set his teeth on edge the moment they’d entered. They were waiting for Puck, who was supposed to get Kurt, or so the she-wolf who had met them there had explained; now she had gone to get _him_ and not returned either.

Blaine paced, grinding his teeth as he fought for cool. He was worried, he could admit that. There was so much to worry about. This late into the night if Kurt wasn’t already in his wolf skin he’d be letting someone fuck him. No, the idea of anyone touching Kurt didn’t exactly make him happy but it wasn’t _just_ that someone else could be claiming the man he loved… Blaine clenched his fists as pain flashed hot in his chest. He cleared his mind and focused on breathing deeply, willing the pain away. Why so much pain?

Fuck.

“Blaine?”

He felt a hand on his shoulder as Wes’ voice came to him over the harsh pounding in his eardrums. When he looked up however, it wasn’t to find Wes at his side but David. Wes wasn’t far from him but David had been the one to dare to get close, to touch him in this state. They had been friends since they were cubs the three of them. They’d shared everything it was possible for them to share. Mating was the first journey any of them had ever had to face alone; David had been the first.

David had met Sally and overnight David’s entire life had seemed to become about the female. Blaine and Wes had teased him about his obsession with the woman, and then helped him jump through hoops to get her attention. Blaine had stood by and watched as David found a new best friend in Sally, as he joined his life and his heart to a woman who (although she seemed to adore him) was changing his life alarmingly fast, and he’d not reacted well. He hadn’t understood what it was like, had no way of understanding how deeply the bond went. He had no doubt that if he lost Kurt now he’d lose a piece of himself, and only David could understand what that pain was like.

Blaine looked into his friend’s eyes, dark pools without even the tiniest hint of warmth behind them, and shivered. To lose one’s mate was to lose one’s self they said. Not all wolves survived it. Blaine thought that David only had, because first he had been bonded with the guard. They were his tether but they couldn’t replace what Sally had taken with her. Sometimes Blaine wondered if David didn’t wish they’d cut him loose.

“If he’s not with Puck and he hasn’t changed by now…” Blaine tried to explain to the one person who might get it, his throat constricting tightly around the words he needed. ‘ _Then I may have lost him to someone else’._ It was easier to think than to say, saying it would make it too real. He took another deep breath and pushed on, taking courage from David’s supportive silence. “And if he has changed, then he’s somewhere out there in a lot of pain right now and a lot of danger.”

His bond with Kurt was already so frighteningly strong. It terrified him that it was so heavily one sided. It was truly dawning on him what a horribly stupid thing he’d done, falling so deeply in love with a man who had no opportunity to bond with him the same way.

God he’d just tumbled right into it, hadn’t he? Just unzipped his chest and gave Kurt every last bit of his once in a lifetime heart, resigning himself to whatever bliss or misery came of it.

“Yes.” David said, and Blaine wasn’t sure which question he was answering anymore but he didn’t think it mattered either. Maybe he had answered them all.

“Right,” turning to Wes Blaine nodded towards the mouth of the alley and said, “no more waiting. I’m finding Kurt.”

They stripped quickly and efficiently, their clothing specially chosen for easy removal, and then they were off. They had barely set out when Blaine caught Puck’s scent, as well as the scent of the she-wolf who had met them in the bar, and another unfamiliar female. No Kurt. They ran to meet Puck and his party, their tension high and only escalating as the got nearer and nearer, and the only trace of Kurt Blaine could scent was on Puck.

Blaine didn’t decide to do it. He honestly didn’t. One minute his eyes were franticly searching for Kurt, _mate_ , and the next they were pinned on Puck’s throat. Puck was beneath him and he was seeing red as his heart plummeted into his stomach.

Kurt’s scent was all over Puck. Had the other lycan held him down like this? Fucked him until his body forgot the moon’s pull— until every cell in it was focused on Puck’s touch, Puck’s bite? Had Puck bruised him with his teeth, his fingertips, his kisses, his hips? Had it been enough for a claim? The thought was tormenting.

He heard shouting voices, he felt the brush of pelts as Wes and David jumped between the two females before they could aide their companion. He knew on some level that he had to get himself under control; he never lost control like this.

So why was it so hard to breathe? Why was Kurt’s scent mingling with Puck’s enough to break his heart? But Puck was still and submissive beneath him, his voice saying things that sounded reasonable and Blaine was a pack alpha—stronger than this, he had to be stronger than this. He didn’t bite down on the bones clasped between his jaws, he didn’t crush, but the pressure in his chest remained crushing, every inch of him reaching for Kurt.

It could have been over before it ever began. Someone could have taken Kurt from him, could _still_ take Kurt from him. He’d want to die.  

Unbidden Blaine threw his head back and howled, his heart thudding painfully as all his yearning was pulled from him and poured out in one long mournful wail.

_Where are you? I need you._ He reached without words, so desperate and raw, so sick inside and terrified of the feeling. Never before had Blaine felt his own mortality so keenly. He’d been close to death before, but always the quick brutal sort. The kind that came upon you bloody and violent, not this cold insidious cancer eating away at his insides, breaking him down, promising emptiness and endless hunger.

His eyes were closed, so Blaine couldn’t see the stars above his head, but Blaine didn’t need eyes to feel the hundreds of collective energies burning brightly around him. The pack was always there, real as the blood flowing through his veins, each and every soul weaved into the fabric of his consciousness, each of them connected to the others through him.

He did not use the pack bond for everything. It wasn’t good to use it more than one needed, a wolf could go mad connected to so many others— lose his mind to the mob— it was for the good of all that he keep distance between them; but there were some things he could not shield them from. In that moment Blaine had no shields, he was naked, and his eyes became their eyes, his need their need.

The silence after his call was pregnant, weighted down by the expectation of hundreds and the despairing plea of one. Puck and the two females had frozen. They weren’t pack but they were lycan. They were wolf and they understood the gravity of these bonds. There was silence, hundreds waiting in darkness for a hint of dawn... and then from the distance an answering howl.

-*-*-

Wait. Wait. The vampire had the woman. Wait. Watch. Wait. Watch. Wait for weakness. Watch.

The vampire moved. The wolf charged. Chase. He was made for this. The joy of the hunt, the joy of _chase_ crept up from his paws all the way to his pounding heart; he reached for the others…

No others. Alone. That wasn’t right. He was heavy inside now. Hungry. Heavy. Why alone?

No, not alone. He had bonds, he had _pack,_ could feel them inside himself. None of them were quite right; none were wolf. There was one that was _almost_. Almost wolf. Faceless, deep, gaping like a wound. The almost one had been there but they were gone now, leaving him unfinished and missing them terribly.

There were others too, these ones with faces, and these weren’t wolf either. There was man in a cap, another one who was taller and younger, a woman ordering the tall one to clean up after himself… a younger woman, _that_ woman, smelling like jasmine. Tina, the name floated to him from a distant place, an unsettled mind weighed down by human fears. He lost his grace, lost his step, as his human mind began to wake and remember.

The vampires wanted Tina.

Protect.

He fell under again.

The vampire was fast but so was he. She weaved through the alleys, panting with exertion. He heard the heart pounding in her chest, smelt the fear in her sweat as she fled from him. Weak. If she’d been strong and healthy she’d have turned to fight. Dangerous. He could smell her wrongness, sense her threat in every raising hair on his body. Faster. He was closer, so much closer. Faster. Closer. Close enough.

She leapt for a fire escape as he lunged. To any outside observer watching the young woman soar to escape, the wolf lunging out of the dark behind her, this was a beautifully timed dance. The wolf’s pelt was silver in the moonlight, a pagan god of old leaping out of myth to latch onto her hopelessly frail looking torso as he yanked her from flight and sent her spinning into the dark. The young woman’s hair fanned out like a skirt as she fell, her cry of pain muffled by the crunch of broken bone as she slammed into concrete. An outside observer would have been horrified at the woman’s crumpled form, at the sight of blood seeping through her dress, at the beast with bloodied fangs circling her. The wolf felt no horror.

The vampire groaned, dazed from her fall, and the wolf knew she was weak. He could smell blood where his teeth had torn holes in her flesh and from where her head had cracked against pavement. Her strength was running onto the pavement, her threat diminishing with each drop of blood, and she knew it— he could see her acceptance in her eyes as she watched him. She was afraid, he could smell it, but she didn’t try to run.

She cried silently.

The wolf’s muscles stiffened as something uncomfortable stirred inside of him. Unease, doubt… all of it so foreign… revulsion, that was foreign too, and thoughts, such strange thoughts.

_Stop_. She wasn’t going to hurt him… he shook his head violently, snarling at her and drowning out the insistent voice in his head.  It wasn’t enough! He couldn’t be satisfied until it was done. She had threatened his pack; she had tried to take what was _his_. There was no concept of mercy in his mind, no option for the enemy to live to try again. Mercy was a human notion, the weak wailing of a child... he jerked away from the female with a tortured whine.

He’d been a child once. He’d been human. He _was_ human. What was he doing… there was only one way this could possibly end… he had to stop, had to stop, had to protect, couldn’t let the vampire hurt his pack… oh god he was going to be sick, going to throw up, going to cry, going to kill!

Driven by a sharp stab of instinct he leapt atop the vampire, raking teeth and claws across her vulnerable flesh and shuddering as a blood chilling scream erupted from her throat and rolled right through him. She wasn’t the only one screaming he realized. He was. He was howling inside, his legs wobbling as instinct retreated from a crush of human emotions and panic overwhelmed everything else.

Kurt looked down at the woman at his feet, or what was left of her, and his stomach roiled.

_‘I’m sorry,’_ he wailed. _‘Oh god oh god oh god.’_ He wanted to die. He ran blindly. He tried to outrun what he’d done, tried to outrun the moon he could still feel in his blood, tried to outrun thought, but of course he couldn’t. It was all still there, still just as monstrous. He’d been living with a nightmare for weeks only to find out that he _was_ the nightmare. A freak, a monster, and he’d just killed someone.

_‘I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to. I’m not a killer. I’m not…’_

Only he had and he was. He shuddered, whining long and low as he ran blindly through the night. He didn’t know where he was going. He needed home. He thought of his father, and if he could have sobbed in this body he would have. Some distantly rational part of his mind new that if he showed up in Lima on the full moon in this body, covered in blood, that his father was as likely to shoot him on sight as to welcome him. It dawned on him then, how alone he was. He’d felt so alone most of his life, even with a father that loved him, even when there had been Eric, and especially after Eric had left him. That was Kurt, always an island, always someone’s vacation destination and never the soil they took root in. He didn’t know if he’d have muddled through it without Rex.

Maybe it was odd to think about a lost pet at the most terrible moment of your life, the moment you’d lost every last bit of familiarity and assurance that things would be alright. Kurt had no such assurance and not a soul in the world to turn to. And what did he want most? His dog. He wanted that unconditional love and faithful support back, that beautiful warm coat that caught all his tears, and the solace that being so clearly and quietly loved by another being had given him. He’d taken it for granted when he’d thought it would always be there. So maybe it actually made perfect sense to think of Rex now.

He couldn’t find a single human being to connect with as deeply as he had that canine. He was pathetic, and twisted now; monstrously twisted. For the first time in a very long time he thought about dying and actually welcomed it.

_‘Please.’_ He begged to no one and everyone at once. _‘Somebody help me.’_

It was then that Kurt heard the howl. It was a song as much as it was a cry. It was the saddest song he’d ever heard, each mournful note aching with need, the singer begging with the sweetest and most tender of pleas.

_‘Where are you? I need you.’_

Kurt slowed his run and perked his ears towards the sound. His heart was still pounding in his chest, but no longer was terror its driving force. Relief washed through him as his heart swelled with something else. It was recognition.

_Rex_. That was impossible, his thoughts raced. The dog had been missing all month. Nevertheless something inside recognized that song and had an answer. So he tipped back his head and he howled.

~*~*~

Tina was cold. She remembered being in the club, trying to prevent Kurt going home with that waiter he’d met the other day. He’d been acting so strangely lately, and she knew how upset his downward spiral was making him. All night he’d been acting like someone had possessed him. At first she’d thought it was just his way of taking her advice and not worrying so much, cutting loose a little, but then those men had started hitting on him and Kurt hadn’t seemed concerned at all that three strange lycans seemed hell bent on making off with him.

She’d been so determined not to leave him there, shocked really that Mike would even think she was capable of leaving her best friend in the hands of a potentially dangerous stranger, but then Mike had grabbed her. He’d held her in an iron grip and shaken her. He’d never been rough with her before, always the perfect gentlemen. Her Michael was one of the gentlest guys she’d ever met, but in that moment she’d seen a much darker side of him. She’d been scared she remembered, and then she’d begun to feel numb all over and the room had gotten darker around the edges as the strangest sort of fog encroached. Thrall, his blond friend had called it. Mike had glamored her.

Falling into thrall had been a bit like falling asleep. Everything had become foggy and slow. She was still in the bar, could see and feel Mike in front of her and the press of other bodies in the crowded club, but sounds reverberated strangely in her ears and she was forced to view everything through that peculiar white fog.

_‘Mike?’_ She’d called for him, but her voice had been nothing but a thin whisper that got lost in the mist of her mind. She’d realized with horror that no matter what she did she couldn’t make any part of her body move and yet she was moving as if directed by an unseen force. She’d been a living doll, duel in nature, one woman surrounded by white who screamed soundlessly and another who had nodded along to Mike’s demands and followed obediently after him as he’d left the club.

She’d listened to Brittany’s memories with revulsion, fearing that she too would be stuck like that forever, and she’d heard the sound of a man screaming and had the strange thought that it had sounded like Kurt. She’d screamed until her voice was raw, strained to so much as blink of her own free will and wailed in frustration when she got nowhere.

Then the werewolf had come and Brittany had said she was going to save Mike’s life. Then she’d bitten her. Pain had sliced through Tina’s neck and her eyes had closed instinctively as control had suddenly returned to her and her body crumpled to the pavement.

Tina lay on the concrete shivering, gulping back tears as her brain franticly tried to make sense of everything she’d been through in the last ten minutes.

“Brittany!” A voice was shouting, drawing closer. “Brittany run!”

She recognized his voice a second before Mike came rushing around the corner. Tina couldn’t tell if he was blurry because of the speed he was running at or because of the tears in her eyes. He was at her side inhumanly quick and Tina hadn’t quite fully processed his sudden arrival when she felt fingertips at her throat, stemming the steady trickle of blood.

“You’re hurt!” She heard Michael growl, his eyes narrowing dangerously as he whipped his head around in search of danger. Her brain finally booted on and she flinched away from his hands, pushing him away as he attempted to gather her in his arms.

“No. NO!” She shouted as he ignored her attempts to shove him away. “Michael, do not touch me!” He froze and she rolled away from him onto her knees and promptly heaved.

“Tina?” Mike laid a hand against her back. “Let me help—”

“You should have _helped_ me with, Kurt,” She insisted as she shrugged his hand off, climbing woozily to her feet. “Y-you should have helped me protect my friend, instead of forcing me to do what you wanted!” Her stomach roiled again as it dawned on her how utterly powerless she’d been, and all the many things Mike could have done or made her do. She’d never hated or mistrusted anyone on principle. She believed in giving everyone a chance to prove themselves and it had never bothered her before, learning that the incredibly smart and beautiful man who had come into her life might be subhuman. She’d been so stupid, so incredibly naïve, almost as bad as one of those dumb heroines in young adult fiction who thought it was just ‘the coolest thing ever’ that their boyfriend turned out to be the son of Satan. Well enough of that.

She started walking, or at least she tried to. Her legs felt leaden and tingly, as if they’d been asleep for hours, and she wobbled with each step. She felt ridiculous, which was infuriating in the extreme because she was still terrified that any second Mike was going to grab her and steal her body again. She had always refused to be this woman, this _victim,_ but it turned out that it wasn’t an issue of strength. No matter what she did she was completely vulnerable and she couldn’t be anything but starkly aware of that. Each second she breathed was a gift given by the man she was trying to leave behind her, and if he decided to hurt her, he could. It was that simple.

“Where are you going?” Mike asked as he grabbed her arm, but this time when she tried to shake him off his grip was like iron. Against her will Tina’s body began to tremble. “Tina, stop! Do you have any idea what’s out there—”  

“Kurt is out there!” She shouted over him. She pressed her teeth against her lips and swallowed back the sobs that wanted to get the best of her. “I don’t know where he is! I left him alone w-with… Oh god and there was a werewolf!” Brittany had left her because there’d been a werewolf after them. Lycan, her mind corrected her and had she been any less frightened she’d have laughed at its insistence on political correctness at a time like this.

“He could b-be dead, he could be—”

“Tina!” Mike shouted over what was admittedly some hysterical rambling on her part, but forgive her for being a bit manic when she’d just suffered through the most invasive and excruciating experience of her life. She fell silent as he shook her, her mind going back to the club. Last time he had done this he had looked in her eyes and taken everything from her. Was it going to happen again now?

She was tempted to close her eyes, give in to the shaking and weeping her frantic mind was assuring her was more than her due, but she emptied her mind of all her fear. For a second she thought of the blond woman she’d just barely met, the kindness in her eyes and the scars on her throat… everything she’d said before she’ led a monster away and saved both their lives. She couldn’t stop Michael from doing what he wanted, but hell if she was going to make it easy on him.

She loved him, even now, and she wanted to believe what Brittany had said about his being a good person. She did, but that was hard to do when she had no reason anymore to trust him and she could not ignore that they had come full circle. Their wills were at odds, so would he take hers away again?

“Let me go Michael,” she demanded with a relieving calm, everything felt a bit better now. She didn’t feel like she was going to blow away at the first wind. She met his gaze unflinchingly. He could wrest her will away from her if he wanted, but she’d never let him forget it was there. She’d never stop trying to escape him. Mike’s eyes widened as he looked back at her, almost seemed to read her thoughts, and he shook his head slowly.

“No, I won’t do that.”

“I’m not asking!” She shot back, reaching up to grab his arms and try to pry them off hers. It was like trying to break steel bars. “Did you think when I let you mark me it meant I was going to let you own me?” Oh god that thought was enough to make her head swim, but she pushed on. “Because you don’t! You don’t own me and I said let me go, so just do it. Let me go!”

It happened in the span of a blink. One minute Mike was in front of her, gripping her arms and glaring down at her, and the next he was behind her. One arm was wrapped around her chest, his hand reaching up to cup her throat, the other was wrapped around her waist and locking her to his body so that she felt all of his heat seeping into her back.

A shivering gasp escaped her as she felt his mouth press to her neck and instinctively she froze, like the prey she knew she was.

“You _are_ mine Tina,” he insisted softly, dangerously. His fingers skipped across the beautiful choker he’d given her to cover his bite marks, to keep what had been the most intimate and pleasurable experience of her life between them. Tears pricked her eyes as she remembered the woman she’d been only hours before, how much she’d felt for this man and how readily she’d trusted him. As if he could read her thoughts Mike made a shushing sound, caressing the skin of her throat softly with his lips.

“Baby, please don’t be scared of me. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.” His fingers came back to trace the fine markings on her choker. “I won’t allow _anyone_ to hurt you, do you understand? You are mine because you gave me your blood, because you are the sweetest thing I have ever tasted or held, and I am so hopelessly addicted to you that I couldn’t stop drinking from you if I tried. You’re mine because you trust me with your body, when I could as easily crush you into dust as hold you like this. You don’t think I know what that means to you? I want to spend the rest of my life marveling at you, Tina. And I will spend what is left of yours making you happy. I promise you’ll be happy. And when I think about all the ways you could be taken from me…”

His arms tightened around her and Tina struggled to breathe. She said nothing; for there were no words she could think of to say. She wasn’t sure if her heart was breaking or if it was mending.  Was it normal to be moved by such words, to want a man this dangerous as keenly as she did? It was utterly insane to be held like this, to hear him say things that would send any sane woman running, and to want nothing more than to feel the penetration of his teeth, for lightening to swim through her veins and to feel the brush of his mind against hers as her body became weightless.

She loved him, she couldn’t deny that, but was it even real?

“Let me go home, Michael.”

He breathed deeply and she said nothing more. But she was beginning to suspect that with Michael she might not always need words, he seemed to be able to read her thoughts without a single one of them passing her lips because slowly he eased his hold on her and stepped back.

“Okay. Okay, you need time to think, so that’s best. Yes it’s best. I need… I need to breathe,” he swallowed deeply as if to illustrate the fact. “I was only trying to keep you safe, I really was. It’s no excuse, but I’m not used to feeling like this.” He ran a hand through his dark hair and tugged on it in frustration. “You’re literally all I can think about anymore and it’s… it’s wonderful but horrible and god!” Tina started as he suddenly stood up straight, his voice rising as he realized, “I haven’t even thought about Brittany!”

Neither had she, Tina realized with shame. It made her all the more wary of herself when she was so consumed by one man that she couldn’t spare a thought for a woman who had more than likely saved her life.

“There was a were-lycan, a lycan,” she corrected herself with a mental kick. “She led it away. It was going to attack us I think… only I don’t understand. She seemed to think you were in the most danger. She said she was saving your life... and then she bit me. What’s going on, do you know—”

“It’s not about who I know, Tina, it’s about who _you_ love.” Mike snapped turning back towards her with the angriest expression she’d ever seen him wear. It was downright frightening but Tina stood her ground. “That wolf was Kurt, and he was trying to protect you. Brittany knew I’d never let him get near you in that state and that we’d—”

“What are you talking about?” She shouted over him, her head beginning to pound at the rush of too much impossible at once. “Kurt isn’t even lycan. He’s human like me, he couldn’t possibly…” Tina paused as a slow sinking feeling came over her. “He couldn’t…”

Oh but couldn’t he? Some insidious voice inside whispered. Hadn’t he been behaving strangely for weeks and hadn’t someone confused him for lycan once before? In all the years she’d known him, Kurt had never admitted to knowing even one lycan, and in one month it seemed like he was running into one every time he turned around. It made sense she realized, awful horrible sense.

_Is it possible to be lycan and not know it?_ Kurt’s desperate question from only a few days before filled her head and Tina’s heart dropped into her stomach. She saw the wolf again, it’s piercing gaze as it crouched in the dark preparing to attack and she shivered.

“Oh, Kurt.” His name caught on a gasp of air as she turned, not really knowing where to go. Her mind was frozen on the thought that somewhere out there her friend was battling a vampire… a woman who had been kind to her, but a super human nonetheless who could so easily hurt him when he was confused and probably terrified out of his mind.

At that moment Mike grabbed her arm again and her startled yelp quickly became a scream of frustration.

“No!” She tried to jerk her arm out of his grasp. “I do _not_ have time for this right now! I’ve got to get to Kurt.”

“That is the _last_ thing you need to do,” he countered and Tina could have pulled her hair out. She’d had about enough of Mike man handling her and telling her what she could or couldn’t do. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but he already seemed to know.  “Let me talk to you! You didn’t like it when I took control before, but I’ll do it again if it means keeping you alive, so please just _listen_.” She really wanted to hit him, somewhere it would hurt, but despite that she knew she had little choice. He wasn’t giving her much of one. She held back an angry retort and waited.

When he saw that she willing to let him talk Mike continued.

“He’s your friend, I get that, but you’ve got to get it in your head right now that he isn’t human anymore. This is an entirely different world and it’s not tame, Tina, it’s dangerous. That’s _my_ friend he’s hunting right now, my coven mate, and she can’t even defend herself.”

“ _She_ can’t defend herself?” Tina couldn’t help but gap. Mike was so angry, angry with Kurt, and it was so unfair she couldn’t even fathom it. “She’s a vampire, Mike! Kurt might be in a wolf’s skin right now but he has been human his entire life. He’s no match for a fucking vampire, or is that all you care—”

“What I care about is you!” Mike thundered over her, coming so close she felt his breath on her face and saw the glisten of his fangs. “How many ways can I say that? I cannot leave you even if it means saving the life of my sister!” Tina blinked, startled at that revelation. Sister? How could Brittany and Michael be related? Reading the confusion on her face he expelled an aggravated breath and paced away from her, pressing his temples as if to stave off a headache.

“She’s coven, and that’s all the family we have,” he explained in a strained voice. When he finally looked back at her there was a look of hurt that she’d never seen before in his eyes, the depth of it making her go still and pinning her as thoroughly in place as if someone had stuck her  through the heart with a needle.

“You don’t know the first thing about being vampire, so don’t act like you know what can or can’t hurt us.” He seethed. “He _will_ kill her, because he’s a wolf and that’s what it’s his instinct to do. And Brittany can’t fight back, do you understand? She won’t, because despite what you seem to think we’re not all trained killers. She was as human as he was once, and _she_ refuses to hurt others.” He spat the words with bitterness and Tina flinched, closing her eyes against the awful feelings his words were stirring inside of her.

“She only drew your blood so that he would be driven to chase her. So that I, the one who brought him here in the first place, wouldn’t have to fight him myself. Do you have any idea what she did for me tonight? What she did for _you_?”

She did. Brittany had done more for her in the most terrifying night of her life than Mike could even understand. And Kurt, poor Kurt, could even now be responsible for her death and it was enough to make her need to be sick. For the second time that night she started to cry, silently this time, but the tears came nevertheless.

“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted, letting the pain of that realization have its way with her. “I’m so scared and I don’t know how to make any of it s-stop.”

When he drew her into his arms this time she didn’t resist the urge to hold him tightly. She desperately needed something solid to hold onto, and Mike had always felt so right.

“I don’t know either.” Mike breathed into her hair and this tightly pressed to him Tina could feel the trembling of his body. “We can talk about what a caveman it makes me later, but I won’t be able to think until I know you’re out of harm’s way. Please let me get you home. Then I can get some of my coven to help me look for Britt and deal with this.”

She wanted to help Brittany, she wanted to help Kurt, but she had to accept the frustrating truth that perhaps tonight her presence wouldn’t be of much help to either of them. She didn’t want to believe for a second that her best friend was capable of murder, but it was there that Mike’s words rang truest. Kurt wasn’t human anymore… there were different rules now. Perhaps if she was going to live in Mike’s world she had to learn what those rules were and figure out if she was willing to play by them. It was the full moon after all and everyone knew how subhuman, especially lycans, were affected by it. If Kurt really was lost to his instincts her interference wasn’t going to help matters.

“Okay,” she finally agreed, and she felt Mike sag in relief. “But only if you promise not to shut me out. So I have to sit this one out. I can do that, but Kurt’s my best friend Mike… and we both owe Brittany so much. I’m not just going to sit at home twiddling my thumbs all the time while you ‘handle things’. I want to know what’s going on and when I can help I expect you to let me.”

For a moment he considered her in pensive silence, and for a moment she doubted. If ever she were to know that any of this was going to work, that she could trust her instincts and make a life with this man, well that moment was now.

“I’d say something about how amazing I think human courage is, considering you’re so small and frail…” he finally grinned at her and she felt a giant wave of relief wash through her. “But I think you’d hit me,” he finished with a chuckle, and Tina did just that.

-*-*-

Blaine called for Kurt, and he followed his answering call. The others had fallen behind, drawn by the scent of blood and pulled to investigate. There was only one thing for Blaine, meeting Kurt, and the others knew they wouldn’t exist to either him or Kurt when the two met. They were needed elsewhere, so they fell back, but Wes and David were pack, and they were never truly separate from Blaine. If he needed them he could call them as easily as he was calling Kurt to him now.

 Close. So close. He could smell him now, not just his trail but his full scent, carried to his nose by wind to cover him and sink inside his blood. He howled, and there, appearing at the mouth of the alley, was a lone figure answering him back. His heart thudded in his chest as he got his first look at Kurt, meeting him for the first time wolf to wolf and not a barrier between them, and the part of him that was a man thought he was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. Sleek and grey with a noble bearing, he was truly an elegant beast, and he could not help the warm flush of pride that spread through him.

Of course Kurt would be. Kurt would be beautiful to him in any form.

And the part that was wolf, the heart of him, it had gone still with recognition. This was his, this was _mate_ and no one else would ever be for him quite like this one wolf.

So claim. Nothing was complicated on an instinctual level.

He approached the grey wolf slowly, until they were standing shoulder to shoulder. Though Kurt’s eyes were the most beautiful of blues in this form, Blaine was careful not to meet his. He did not know how much of Kurt’s mind had been overridden by instinct, so he met him as an equal in a way that his wolf would understand. It was a gift, the first sign of respect any eager suitor could give. There was no rank here. There was an old lycan saying, that even emperors were brought low by love.

Kurt was tense next to him, his sinewy frame vibrating with suppressed tension, his ears flat against his skull and when Blaine heard him whimper he couldn’t help himself.

_‘Everything’s going to be alright,’_ he promised. He turned his head to lick at Kurt’s muzzle, nuzzling his cheek when the grey accepted the gesture of affection and did not warn him back. It was as he was comforting Kurt that he finally noticed the blood drying in his coat. For a moment terror sliced through him as he sniffed over the smaller wolfs form, searching for a source of injury, but he calmed as he realized that the blood did not in fact belong to Kurt.

Kurt had fought with someone? Who? When? What if he had been injured? Blaine huffed and resolutely pushed aside all thought of what could have happened to Kurt, off fighting the unknown, and focused on grooming him. He could do that. He would make one thing feel better. Each lick, each rub of shoulder, each plaintive whine was a plea. _Feel better._ He pushed against him, breast to breast, in order to share body heat. He could feel Kurt wanting to respond, to nuzzle against his neck and shoulders and to mingle their scents, but he held back. His body was stiff with fear even as he unconsciously leaned into Blaine.

_‘Kurt?’_ Blaine whispered to him, wondering if his human mind was conscious at all or if he was still completely lost to his new instincts. It was a moment before he heard Kurt’s thoughts, uncertain and hesitant that Blaine could truly hear him.

_‘Blaine?’_ At the sound of his name Blaine couldn’t help the way his heart lurched happily in his chest, his tail wagging in the most unseemly way. Had he been able to care about anything but the wolf beside him at that moment, he’d have been mortified to discover that Kurt still had the ability to make him act so foolishly, like a common dog.

_‘Hi.’_ It was sort of silly, to greet Kurt as if they had never met when they had for more history behind them than Kurt even knew, but then again none of that mattered now. Kurt was here, Kurt was the most beautiful and perfect thing he had ever seen and he wanted to play. Blaine wanted to run with him, to feel every inch of him, to know every note of his scent by memory and to touch him until they made a new one for both of them. He wanted to lick Kurt absolutely everywhere and pin him to the dirt and…

Blaine lost his train of thought as Kurt swayed, tugged by an invisible hand. Blaine held his breath as Kurt tucked his head beneath Blaine’s jaw and nuzzled against his neck.

_‘Hi.’_ Kurt returned his earlier greeting softly. Blaine heard his almost peaceful inward sigh before he quietly added, ‘ _you always make it feel better._ ’

_‘You were alone before,’_ Blaine explained, the words twisting in his stomach with guilt. ‘ _You won’t ever be again.’_ He left ‘even if you don’t want me’ unsaid but he meant it. Blaine had already promised that whatever happened, he’d never let Kurt become be alone. He had not forgotten the primarily solitary life Kurt had lived as a man and how that had hurt him. Kurt was as much wolf now as he was man. Wolves were not built to be alone, perhaps even less so than humans.

‘ _I was mad at you earlier I think…’_ Kurt murmured, taking Blaine out of his thoughts with a single stroke of his tongue. One devastating hesitant lick to his shoulder and every last hair on Blaine’s body rose. ‘ _But you smell really good.’_ Kurt was licking him insistently now, like a kitten lapping up cream, and rubbing gently against him so that the air was thick with the smell of him and…. Blaine was hard. That was an understatement.

Blaine was only seconds away from leaping on top of the grey wolf and fucking him six ways to Sunday. Had he been anyone else he might have. Not a single lycan alive would begrudge him a little lost control on this night, with this man, but he was a pack alpha and that meant being the one who kept order _especially_ when it was hard for others.

Because as much as he’d love to fuck Kurt into the dirt and mark him in a hundred different ways, Kurt was too moon drunk for his consent to be worth anything. In fact Blaine already knew Kurt didn’t really want him, he’d said as much on the phone. He’d said he’d never wanted Blaine to call again, never mind Blaine’s hands on him. And ha, wasn’t that a laugh, because it wouldn’t be hands even. It would be animal and raw… and so, so, good… _Stop it_! 

No, Blaine couldn’t rationalize fucking Kurt like an animal in the dark when he was at his most vulnerable. He wouldn’t. He absolutely wouldn’t, because he wanted Kurt’s forever and not just his tonight.

Even as he thought about what he had to do that night, what he couldn’t allow himself to do, his chest tightened and something deep in his gut clenched hot in protest.

_Want._

Blaine shuddered.

He’d waited so long. Too long. There were others. Others who would want. He growled without thought and turned his head to nip Kurt’s shoulder, to grip with teeth, to leave the first and faintest of marks.

_Mine!_

_‘Yes.’_ Kurt’s ardent reply hit him simultaneously hot in the gut and sharp in the face like a slap. His inward thoughts were slipping out now. What was he doing? ‘ _Losing control’_ , he thought darkly to himself. ‘ _Ruining everything.’_ He was better than this.

Blaine made a snap decision then. He backed away from Kurt and then turned, not needing to look to know that Kurt was following him. He could not have been more tied to the grey wolf if a visible thread had been wrapped around their forelegs. There was a visceral pull between them that even Blaine could not bring himself to ignore, so Kurt had no chance.

As he sprang off into the dark Kurt followed after. Blaine weaved through the city streets, keeping to back alleys and side streets as much as possible to avoid densely populated areas. Humans were aware of the danger of a full moon, but the lycans here were tame and people were forgetful. They would not be accustomed to seeing wolves roaming the streets and nor would they welcome it.

Blaine knew where he was headed. He hated the pavement, hated the buildings and the houses and the smell of too many bodies piled on top of each other. The city was no place for a true wolf and, tonight of all nights, boy did he know it. He was headed for the only type of nature this city had to offer, a place that would feel like home for both of them.

Blaine’s blood sang with power. He stretched his legs longer with each stride as his body thrummed with energy. He ran for both their sakes, both their needs, and he ran to show Kurt the wonder of it. When they reached the park— the same one he and Kurt had spent every Saturday in, the very place Blaine’s life as Rex had ended and Kurt’s new life had begun— that’s when Blaine asked him to dance. Not with words, for there was no place for words anymore. What Blaine wanted was older than time itself and in his deepest heart there was only one language available to talk about it. He slowed to a prance without warning or signal and made a sharp turn in a different direction.

Warmth burst inside him as Kurt matched him step for step, until they were parallel from their noses to the tips of their tails. They paced alongside each other so closely it was truly a wonder that Blaine didn’t trip over him. He never could. He’d been born for this moment, for these steps, and he was certain more and more, for this man.

He’d never done a mating dance with another lycan before, so he had no one to compare against, but Kurt was the perfect partner. He followed every shift in Blaine’s movement and read every instruction in every line of Blaine’s form almost before it was given. They loped through the tall grass by the pond and they made graceful turns through the trees, their hearts thundering more and more by the second.

Kurt was so beautiful like this in the moonlight, so utterly perfect in every way.  Blaine reached over and grasped his ear to tug and Kurt’s steps faltered as dance suddenly became play. And then Kurt was twisting out of Blaine’s hold, his laughter ringing between their minds as he attempted to wrestle Blaine to the ground. They played until they were breathless, until there was nothing left to do but curl against each other in the grass and pant for breath with wolfish grins.

His whole body was exhausted; his inner wolf content and quietly receding like an ocean tide. Everything was warm where Kurt was pressed against him. Their gazes were locked together, electric blue with molten amber, and with every breath Blaine felt the world fall away a bit more. The shift from wolf to man was as easy as inhaling, and Kurt followed suit with ease.

Kurt didn’t fight the twisting of muscle and bone this time. He wasn’t thinking about the fact that his body was bending and twisting, he was thinking of amber eyes and miles of naked skin that he absolutely needed to touch in order to draw another breath. It was a matter of his subconscious mind preparing him for what they both wanted to come next, what _needed_ to come next.

This was his alpha. He’d been waiting for this forever.

If Blaine had thought that Kurt was beautiful in his lupine body, then a naked Kurt under moonlight was the new standard he was going to judge beauty by. He couldn’t help the way his breath caught, or his fixation on the bead of sweat trickling down Kurt’s glistening brow, any more than he could stop the way his body responding to the feel of Kurt’s legs tangled up with his.

Blaine knew he was sweaty too, could feel some of it trickling out of his damp hair and down his face, and Kurt’s gaze had become enraptured by it.  They stared, each fascinated by the other, both of their bodies taught and ready like bow strings. Blaine wondered what would be the spark that set them off. Kurt reached up one pale hand and all it took was the barest touch. Blaine grabbed Kurt’s wrist before he could think about why he shouldn’t.

He rolled Kurt onto his back and pinned wrists above his head. Kurt let out a low moan and Blaine groaned in reply, dropping his head down to the hollow between Kurt’s neck and shoulder and breathing deeply. He drew in his scent until he was growling with need, every muscle taught with the urge to pounce. He shouldn’t. There had been some reason…

“No, please, don’t stop,” Kurt begged, rubbing up against Blaine’s leg wedged between his thighs. “I want... I want…nnngh” Kurt made an indiscernible sound as Blaine licked a stripe of sweat off his neck. He loved the taste of Kurt’s skin. He wanted to lick over every inch of it. Wanted to lick and suck until he was begging just so.

“What do you want?” Blaine asked, because he had to hear how badly Kurt wanted it, had to know he wasn’t alone in _wanting_ this badly, loved the beautiful way he begged, every last needy breathy note of it. Nothing could have prepared him for how Kurt answered.

He stared right at Blaine through heavy lidded lashes and growled softly, “fuck me. I want your hands in my hair…” Kurt lifted up as he spoke, caught between wanting to turn over and wanting more friction against the aching erection up against Blaine’s knee. “Fuck. Want your nails down my back… your teeth on my neck… want you to make me take it.”

Every single last thought Blaine had scattered as Kurt growled out those filthy words. He pictured it. He pictured flipping Kurt over, sinking his teeth into the back of his neck and biting him until he went submissive and still, until he was whimpering with need. He thought about pulling his head back by his hair and taking him without restraint, thought about making him howl.

Blaine made a snap decision because a second longer and he would have done it.

He pressed Kurt’s wrists harder into the dirt and let his fingers dig into Kurt’s skin. He rubbed his knee deliberately against Kurt’s hard cock and couldn’t help a dark chuckle at the sound of his sharp intake of breath.

“You want me to dominate you, Kurt?” He asked and Kurt nodded so insistently it was almost comical. “Want me to pin you down and fuck you?”

“Please?” Kurt looked so hopeful, so devastatingly wanton, Blaine could have cried. He bit him instead, gripped the side off his neck just above his collar bone firmly between his teeth and moaned as Kurt keened, arching against him. When he fell back again Blaine released him, lapping at the purpling bruise and growling between clenched teeth.

“Will you obey?” Blaine asked what every self-respecting alpha asked when they took a partner for the night. It was ritual but it was also powerful too. If Kurt surrendered his will for the night it wouldn’t actually force him to obey Blaine, but it would make him temporarily vulnerable to Blaine’s alpha control, in the same fashion his pack members were. The way his mate would always be.

It was a way for a dominant lycan to offer a submissive one, for a night, what they one day all hoped to offer someone for always.

“Yes,” Kurt panted in reply. “Yes, yes, just please…”

Blaine let go of his wrists and gripped either side of his face. Kurt went still as Blaine’s gaze bored into him. It was so unfair. Kurt’s beautifully submissive responses, his intoxicating smell…why shouldn’t he just… Control! He couldn’t afford to lose control. If not for duty, then certainly for love. He had to show some self-control.

He stroked Kurt’s cheek gently with regret, then with all the dominance that he possessed he quietly ordered him to sleep.

Kurt’s eyes widened with shock, and for a moment Blaine thought that even with his body clamoring to submit and his mind moon addled, that this beautiful _impossible_ man was going to defy him, but then his lashes were drifting shut and Kurt slumped in his arms, just as obedient as he’d promised to be.

Blaine rolled off of Kurt’s still form and stared up at the stars, fighting for breath. He had to get away from Kurt, his nearness was just too much and the urge to claim too strong. He couldn’t go too far though either. No not with Kurt so vulnerable. Anyone could come along and… Blaine blinked to find himself wrapped around Kurt’s sleeping form, caging him protectively in his arms and growling softly into his shoulder.

Groaning he eased away again and sighed.

It was going to be a long night.


	7. Behind Enemy Lines

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A helpful word guide:
> 
> MacTere: derived from the gaelic word for wolf, mac tíre, whose literal meaning is 'son of the countryside’, and is pronounced mac cheer-uh.
> 
> Loup-garou: French for werewolf, literal translation is wolf man. I figured this is what a French Lycan would call himself.

The young man shuddered beneath him, the muscles in his arms straining against the binds that held his wrists locked together, the light of fear in his eyes made only brighter and hotter by the want surging behind it. God was he beautiful like this. Even though he hated how much he wanted it, he did _want_ it. It was almost elegant, the way that the blond boy with steel in his spine, who had so earnestly resisted him, now unraveled beneath his touch. The youth was learning firsthand how fire could weaken steel and make it collapse beneath pressure.

Nicolas Duval knew all about pressure, and he was more than familiar with fire. It was something of a private joke between him and the small pack of strays he belonged to that they’d been reared in hell. Their family, the oldest in France, had been driven from their territory by Hunters. Though the original pack was scattered, the strays that had followed their alpha’s son to America were united in purpose to rebuild and punish the ones who had taken everything from them. Each of them was remnant of a fallen dynasty, and none of them had known a moment’s softness since the day their pack had been destroyed. They could not afford it.

Nicolas preyed upon the weak, and he made no exception for titles. Omega, beta, alpha, it was all the same to him. Those were just meaningless words, cushiony armor that lazier alphas depended upon for security. He needed no safeguards. Nicolas Duval was _loup-garou_.

A true wolf won supremacy simply by being supreme. The young alpha hissing at the touch of his tongue against over sensitive flesh was simply inferior, rightfully subordinate to Nick’s superior will and stamina. He was admittedly a worthy enough inferior, worthy enough to keep by his side anyway. Nick intended to do just that. Bringing Jeffery Sterling, protégé of Westerville’s Beta-Major, to heel had been ridiculously easy, and breaking him in would be even easier. Not to mention a whole lot of fun.

Nick wrapped his fist around the young alpha’s cock and twisted, just a bit cruelly, and the lithe youth writhed on the bed beneath him, desperate to get away from the pain and shamed at the pleasure blooming hot in his belly. ‘ _Unfairly beautiful’_ , Nick thought to himself.

“So ashamed,” he murmured as the youth’s cheeks flushed and silent tears brimmed in his eyes. “So afraid I’ll make you beg for it again. Make you remember how much you loved it.”

“Please…” the boy whined, high and soft, and Nick knew without having to ask that Jeff no longer even knew whether he was begging to be released, or begging for the return of Nick’s mouth against his cock.

“Are you going to tell me now what has kept your alpha so busy?” Nick asked, expecting that the younger alpha would naturally be wrung tight enough to spill his secrets. He was only a protégé, still just a cub really, and it was the full moon no less. But contrary to what he expected, Nick looked up with surprise when he heard the blond’s teeth click as his jaw clamped shut. A growl rumbled low in the boy’s chest.

“Fuck you,” the protégé hissed through his clenched teeth, and Nick silently watched him with awe. So Jeff wasn’t broken. He had to admit to feeling some pleasure at that. In hindsight he should have had more faith in the boy. He was worthy after all. There was a particular reason that Nicolas had volunteered so eagerly for this assignment from Sebastian. He should have known that Jeff wouldn’t have captured his interest if he weren’t a challenge.

“You are so adorable. You know that?” He smiled at the younger man’s blush and nuzzled the inside of his thigh with his nose, dragging the blonds scent into his lungs. He’d like to wear it. He’d like to be so deeply inside this boy they could never be separated. That was a strange feeling. “I love how loyal you are. It’s a great asset for any wolf. But it’s so misplaced.” When Jeff’s eyes narrowed in confusion Nick smiled sadly against his skin.

“You give loyalty to a naive pup who defends the very guild who would let humans destroy us, and then punish us for defending ourselves.” When Jeff shook his head Nick tensed in anger, fury glowing hot in his gut like embers. Why couldn’t Jeff see? Why didn’t any of these domesticated dogs get it! “Yes. Yes it’s true. Don’t deny it! They slaughtered my entire pack, they butchered one of your own, and when that puppy you call an alpha finally got the balls to bite back what did they do to him?”

Jeff whined again, twisting his lower body vainly, in an effort to get away from Nick’s hands. For an instant the brunette gripped tighter, driven by some wild instinct to pin the boy down and never let him go. He realized belatedly that his nails had extended and were digging into the boys pale skin and he hastily let go. It wasn’t right to mar such a beautiful canvas. He never wanted anything to break this beautiful creature apart except him, and only if they both enjoyed it.

_Mine._

“Shhh. I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he crooned to a distraught Jeff as the young lycan male began tugging at his binds anew. “It’s the moon. I want to hurt them all. Hunt down every last one of them… But right now I want to make you scream a whole lot more. I know you want it too. You’ve wanted it since the day we met. I’ll put us both out of our misery. I promise. Just tell me what I want to know.”

When no reply was forthcoming and Jeff refused to settle back down, Nick snapped his teeth against his thigh, holding on even when the boy hollered with pain. He bit till he tasted blood and the boy went still. It was dangerously close to a claiming bite. Only when submission had been granted did Nick let go, rewarding his beautiful companion with a soothing lick to the bleeding bite.

“God I love you like this.” Nick moaned. There weren’t words for how sexy the sound of Jeff’s ragged pants were. “Not gonna fuck you. Only good boys get fucked.” He sucked against the bite, darkening it and drawing the copper taste of Jeff’s blood against his tongue, shivered through another moan as he resisted the urge to clamp down again, this time long enough to claim.

“But you can suck me. I want those pretty lips around my cock. Do you want that?”

“No… n- fuck!” Jeff arched his hips off the bed with a gasp as Nick thrust a finger inside his hole, which was still slick from the tongue fucking Nick had given him earlier. Despite the discomfort of the dry digit Jeff undulated his hips, desperately trying to force Nick in deeper, crying out, “yes! Oh fuck yes. I want… No! No no please don’t stop…please. I want…” He all but sobbed when Nick removed his fingers and the brunette chuckled smugly at him.

“Fuck you, Nick,” Jeff seethed through his gasps for breath. “I f-fucking hate you!”

“No you don’t, gorgeous.” Nick dragged his tongue over the purpling bruise of the bite, the trembling flesh of Jeff’s thigh, and grinned as Jeff groaned low. “I really don’t think you do.”

-*-*-

Allie Hayes was awake when Wes came to fetch her to the main house. She hadn’t slept through a full moon since she was the tiniest of cubs, when her mother would put her safely to sleep and leave her in the hands of her watchful grandmother. Unless you were too old, too young, or too pregnant, the night of the full moon was a night for hunting and whatever play could be found. She’d had her share of full moon escapades back in her day, but these days her old bones were far better suited to herding the cubs.

As head den mother it was her job to organize the monthly midnight run for the students of Dalton Academy. There was a lot to consider when organizing such things: the age of the cubs, who best to supervise them, how many omegas to send with each group. And of course, what with the children still learning to control their instincts and master their changes, there were plenty of bang ups for her to smooth over as the night progressed.

She’d been up all night and everyone else had finally fallen into bed now that the moon had finally disappeared. One look at the torn and bleeding face of Wes and she was springing back into action. She tugged on her shoes and followed him up to the manor house, tutting at the wounds he insisted looked worse than they felt. When she learned that it was _Blaine_ who had decided to claw up his cheek, she didn’t have to ask what she was needed at the manor for. Alphas were always extremely protective after a claim, often irrationally so for the first few hours. The entire pack had been with Blaine when he’d opened the bond, sharing Blaine’s soul for lack of a better description, up until the moment the man he’d been calling for had answered back. Though the connection had faded after that, one could assume he’d have found the boy, claimed him, and brought him back here to the pack where he now belonged. In what condition she could only imagine.

David met them at the front door and when Allie inquired after Blaine he and Wes shared a look. She glanced between them, her heart filling with unease. She still had no idea what to expect as David waved them inside. Any number of things could have occurred between Blaine and the human that night. She couldn’t imagine how it must have been for a terrified human to find himself pinned by one of her kind in his most primal state. It was enough to make her feel sorry for the young man. But Blaine had to be her priority. Blaine was not only her blood, but her alpha. So much was riding on his wellbeing and he always took his failures so closely to heart. He would never forgive himself if he’d started life with his mate through force.

As they marched through the manor house in silence, with no answers forthcoming, Allie huffed a breath.

“Have cats got both your tongues?” She demanded to know. “Am I helping you burry a body?”

“We’re trying to avoid that actually,” David replied, with something that could have been teasing in another life, but was best described as distant now. “Blaine’s not at his best. We were hoping you could calm him down so the doctor can look at Kurt.”

Allie’s heart fell. If the boy needed a doctor it could only mean the worst. They would get through it. Rougher claims had happened before. Steeling her spine Allie knocked smartly on the door of Blaine’s bedroom when they arrived at it, announcing her presence loudly and clearly to minimize the sense of threat. Dr. Quinn Fabray, who had been waiting outside the door at their arrival, moved to give her room as she pressed her ear to the wood.

“Go away!” Blaine’s voice came through the wood in a muffled snap and beside her Wes rolled his eyes.

“He’s been like this since we tracked the two of them down. He’s down right vicious if you try to get near Kurt, but the kid is covered in blood and we’re not sure if it’s from the fight with the vampire or—”

“Vampire?” Allie gaped and behind the door Blaine’s low growls became out right snarls.

David nodded gravely as he answered her.

“Before we could track him down he went feral and attacked one of coven Balaur.”

Oh dear. That was not good at all. Balaur would want vengeance against any who hurt one of his children. A fact that Blaine was all too aware of it seemed as he let out something like an angry roar.

“No one is going to touch him! I won’t let any of those fanged bastards lay a hand on him.”

Allie almost joined Wes in rolling his eyes to the ceiling. A newly mated alpha in the middle of moon madness was one of the more ridiculous creatures on the planet.

“Well none of us are vampires, and neither is doctor Fabray.” Allie shared an amused glance with Quinn as she attempted to reason with the feral alpha behind the door. “She’s a doctor, remember, dear? If your young man is hurt at all she can help him.”

“I didn’t hurt him,” Blaine insisted with a mournful sounding whine. “I’d never let anyone hurt him.”

“Of course not,” Allie assured him, secretly feeling relieved that it appeared the worst of her fears were unfounded. “But the vampire may have. Your mate could be in a lot of pain right now. I know you don’t want him to be in pain.”

Heavy silence followed as Blaine battled with the conflicting urges to see to Kurt’s wellbeing and to protect him from the perceived threats outside the door.

“Blaine?” Quinn called to him gently. “It’s me, Quinn. You can smell me can’t you? Please let me in. I want to help. Don’t make me break my promise.” Allie smiled warmly at the blond woman at her side, glad that Quinn was wise enough to catch onto the fact that reminding Blaine of their past, and consequently of Quinn’s humanity, was the only way to get through to him in this state.

Quinn was human (easily overpowered if she proved to be any threat to the young man Blaine was so intent on protecting) and not just any human but ly-kindred. She was sworn to keep their secrets and uphold their interests in human circles, but her status with the alpha wasn’t the only reason Quinn would never betray them. She owed their alpha a life debt, not just for her own life but for her daughter Beth’s. She’d promised Blaine that she’d always do whatever she could to help him in return for his continued protection and a place for her daughter in the pack.

Allie heard the movement behind the door long before the latch clicked. She drew herself and the young woman beside her back, leaving plenty of respectful distance between them and Blaine as he finally opened the door to them. She pursed her lips to press back a smile as she got her first look at him. Her poor nephew looked like he’d been dragged through the woods naked, curls in wild disarray with a twig or six caught in the nest, his eyes (which were as wide as dinner plates) were bloodshot and framed by heavy bags. It wouldn’t have done very good to laugh at him, the poor boy. Every muscle of his body was tensed and ready to spring, she might have ended up with a face like Wesley’s.

Wes and David, both unattached alpha’s, had wisely pulled back to the end of the hall. When Blaine pinned them with a glare and a growl Wes raised his palms up in surrender and took a few more paces backwards.

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about from either of them, honey.” Allie assured him with a comforting pat to the arm as Quinn slipped past him to see to the patient. Blaine whipped his head around to watch her with careful suspicion and Allie rubbed at his arm soothingly where she gripped him. The contact drew Blaine’s wild gaze to hers and after a moment Allie’s fond grin began to dim. She had seen alphas after a mating claim in many different stages. She’d seen almost every version of feral behavior there was, and something about Blaine’s behavior was off.

His muscles were so tense his body was quivering with the effort to suppress the urges that were riding him. There was a rawness to him that stank of vulnerability, as if at any moment he would fly to pieces never to be put back together again. He stared at her like he didn’t quite know who she was; her _,_ the woman who had all but raised him and his brother.

Allie didn’t often think of Cooper, for she knew well that it did the heart no good to dwell on tragedy, but she thought of him now. She remembered all too well the way he’d looked close to the end. The way his eyes, once alive with joy and mischievousness, had become shadowed and frantic to mirror his father’s. She’d lost so many cubs to Julian’s madness. She wasn’t going to lose Blaine for anything.

“Blaine?” She called him firmly, drawing him back from the dark place his mind was trapped in. “Come on now. Wake up. There’s a good boy.”

She watched as slowly the light of reason returned to his eyes, as he inhaled deeply and exhaled a shaky breath. When he finally unclenched his fists Allie noticed that his palms were riddled with bloody crescent moons from where his nails had bitten into them. She grabbed up his hand to examine the wounds with displeasure.

“Really, Blaine, all this drama is unnecessary. The boy is here now, for better or for worse. He’s safe and he’s yours. No one is trying to take him from you.”

When Blaine finally spoke it was so low and rough, Allie almost had trouble deciphering that he’d said anything at all.

“He’s not.”

“What?” She asked, not sure at all that she’d heard him correctly.

“He’s not mine,” Blaine repeated with more force and Allie gaped at him. Though that would explain Blaine’s frenzy well enough, how could that possibly be? She hadn’t seen a full moon hit Blaine this hard in years and he was smack dab in the middle of a courtship. A legion of vampires shouldn’t have been enough to keep him from making his claim tonight. She didn’t understand. He was suitably naked, and erect at that, as was the man on the bed that Quinn was tending to.

Allie raked her eyes over the convert, noticing the paleness of his skin and taking stock of each place where it was marred with bruises and scratches. Her eyes widened when she realized what she _wasn’t_ seeing. There was a single bite mark marring that porcelain flesh. It wasn’t the correct shape to be from the vampire, and perhaps equally distressing, it wasn’t deep enough to be a claim bite either.

Allie blinked as slowly the pieces began coming together.

“Why?” She finally asked. “I know you’re sure. Look at you. You’re wolf Blaine, not some wishy washy human who has to scour his soul to figure out which way is up.” There was no denying that. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that there wasn’t a single part of Blaine not already given to the human over on the bed. She didn’t understand it herself, but if this Kurt Hummel was Blaine’s choice, so be it. Why was he torturing himself by dragging it out?

But she knew Blaine, better than his poor mother ever had, and the answer came to her before he even finished speaking.

“He didn’t choose becoming one of us, Aunt Allie.” He seemed to be reminding himself as he gazed longingly at Kurt’s still form. “I can’t. I can’t spend the rest of my life with him knowing I took this choice away too.”

“Blaine…” She was at a loss for words, and so very frightened for him. He had always been such a brave, beautiful, _silly,_ boy.

Inhaling sharply he suddenly turned to stride away, as if he feared what would happen if he lingered a moment longer. Before he could go she caught his arm again. She couldn’t let him leave without making sure he understood.

“It won’t matter that you didn’t claim him.” Blaine did not look at her but he was still as he listened. “You gave your heart to him, there won’t be another for you, and if you lose him...”

As if guided by an invisible hand they both looked to where Wes and David waited at the end of the hall. Wes was watching them closely, but David had decided that the danger was over and had settled back against the wall to get lost in his own thoughts. He was somewhere distant, as he often was these days. His eyes were staring off down the hall, but they both knew he was no longer in the same world they were.

No one knew where his mind went when he wasn’t focusing on his duties; truthfully they all feared the day they did. A wolf got old, and that other place began to call to them more and more. It became harder and harder to hold themselves to the pack, keep their minds from wandering. Many of the elders simply got up one day and drifted away from the others. They wandered off with no apparent purpose other than to find a place to die. It was feared by the young because death was always feared by those with youth, but Allie had accepted long ago that everyone had to die someday. She should be so lucky that everyone she loved lived to wander off to their eternal rest.

It should not be happening to David; not so young.

This time last year he had been thrumming with life, anticipating being a father and so ridiculously in love that it had almost been obscene the way he and Sally had carried on. Now he was a dead man walking, and every last one of them knew it was only a matter of time.

Now Blaine had given his heart to this human.

It was at that moment, with those thoughts, that Allie Hayes really began to fear the young man sleeping in the bed.

~*~*~

Puck was jarred from sleep that morning by the sound of pounding at his door. He’d fallen into bed minutes before dawn, dreading the very confrontation he knew he was about to have. ‘ _Anderson owes me for this_ ’, he grumbled to himself as he hobbled across the floor on sleepy legs to answer the impatient knocking at his front door. Shelby Cocoran, Alpha Shue’s Second, wasted no time swooping inside of Puck’s tiny one bedroom once the door was open to her, tension practically crackling in the air around her. Puck was a little more surprised to see that she’d brought Rachel with her, though he suspected that the she-wolf hadn’t given the woman much choice. Rachel had this knack for annoying you to death until you gave her what she wanted.

The tiny brunette looked as tense as Shelby was making him, with her lips pressed together in a worried line as she watched her birth mother stride over to the fridge in Puck’s kitchen and pluck a dusty book off the top.

“Considering the layer of grime on this thing, this is going to seem really redundant, but have you read this Puckerman?” Shelby demanded to know, waving the little leather bound book for emphasis. Puck winced, feeling a tiny niggling of guilt as both women waited for him to admit that no, he hadn’t made it through “The rules of Engagement” the council approved law book by which The Guild governed the three races of subhumans.

“Because what it looks like to me, is you tossed this where you toss all your trash and thought you could half ass being a member of _my_ guard!” He opened his mouth to protest but Shelby punched out all the air in his stomach by thrusting the book into his gut and demanding he read it. “Since I don’t have time to wait for you to learn the rules, let me catch you up. I suggest you don’t interrupt me.”

Puck clenched his teeth and resigned himself to waiting. Shelby was one of the toughest lycan’s he’d ever met so he wasn’t going to pretend like he wasn’t afraid of getting his ass handed to him if he pushed her too far. He’d roamed all the way to the west coast in search of real wolves who weren’t afraid of who they were and never met a woman like her. Shelby was a woman who knew how to walk on her wild side.

So he couldn’t quite resist asking, “Why, would you spank me?”

Rachel’s eyes bugged out and she gave Puck this incredulous look, like she couldn’t believe he’d dared to equate the great and powerful Miss Cocoran with anything sexual. Which was ironic considering Rachel.

“Really, Noah?” The younger brunette scoffed. “I don’t think now is the time for insubordination.”

“She’s welcome to try and knock me down a peg.” Puck shrugged, he’d be lying if he said Rachel’s little gasp of shock wasn’t a bit entertaining.

“Is sex all you think about you—” She began to retort but she was interrupted by the sound of Shelby’s palm connecting with the wooden doorframe of the kitchen with a sharp crack.

“I want you both to be quiet!” The older woman snapped and Puck couldn’t help it, his spine stiffened as he stood to attention and his lips clamped shut in response to the clear command in her voice.

Shelby was the true leader of Pack Columbus. She could command a room as well as any alpha, better even than alpha Shue, and with one command she could silence her alpha daughter and Puck; who wasn’t sure anymore what he was. They were all born with set genders, set instincts, and they all got classified at sexual maturity. There were clear patterns too, that other lycan’s seemed to fall naturally into. Alphas were all born dominant, omegas likewise all subs, with Betas bearing the unique disposition to switch despite perhaps a preference for one or the other.

Puck was supposed to be an alpha dominant, he wasn’t supposed to want to be dominated, but sometimes he did. There had been times when he’d been in school, pretending to be human, that he’d looked at a girl and wanted things no dominant should want. Not all the time, but frequently enough to freak him out, to worry his mother, and to make him fear what would happen if anyone ever found out. It made him weaker than the other alphas, a target, and though he was a whiz at hiding it and would gladly kick the ass of anyone who wanted to challenge his dominance… well.

Last night a wet behind the ears convert— a beta no less, that he had it on good authority had begged for Blaine, a _true_ alpha, to fuck him senseless only minutes later— had dominated him. What a fucking disgrace as an alpha he was turning out to be. No he hadn’t exactly been turned on by the experience (he was really more of a ladies man) but he couldn’t say that something about it hadn’t been exciting. There had been a spark in his blood, an understanding that he wanted that from a woman (if not from Kurt) and that all his life he’d been _missing_ that.

So really, could anyone fault him for hanging around a lame town like Columbus when Shelby was so _Shelby,_ and he always seemed one fuck up away from being pinned to the dirt and taught a lesson? That was the real reason he’d finally settled in the city, pathetic as it was. So he shut his mouth and he waited, privately enjoying the feel of Shelby’s dominance settling over him and soaking it up like a wilting plant with thirsty soil. Who knew when it would rain again?

“I asked you when you came to Will begging for a place in the guard—” Shelby began to say as she walked slowly toward Puck. “—why you wanted it when it’s clear to anyone with half a brain that you’re not cut out for civilian life. You’re wild, you’re unruly, and frankly a pain in the ass to keep in line.”

Puck couldn’t help a smirk of pride at Shelby’s words. Maybe he wasn’t always a defective alpha.

“You remember what you told me?” Shelby asked and Puck nodded stiffly. How could he forget?

“Word’s Noah.” Puck hissed with pain as Shelby reached out and tugged sharply on his hair, dragging his head down till their eyes met. The pain, as well as the challenge of the gesture, would have been enough to irritate any proper alpha. Puck only felt a delicious shiver roll down his spine, his mind clearing as it focused intently on the woman in front of him.

“Remember who you’re talking to and answer me directly when I ask you a question,” Shelby reminded him with the assurance of someone who knew they would be obeyed. “What did you tell me, Noah?”

His eyes flicked to Rachel, who was watching them nervously and Shelby tugged on his hair again, just sharply enough to refocus him.

“Noah?” And Puck could not have denied her anything in that moment, everything inside of him going liquid and hot.

“I said I wanted to belong to something,” he muttered in answer and his subconscious instantly corrected, ‘ _Someone. You want to belong to someone’_. The admission sent a hot wave of shame flooding through him and it was accompanied by fear. That was so wrong. Why did he always have to be _wrong_? Why couldn’t he do this one thing right?

“Very good.” Shelby rewarded him with a gentle drag of her nails over his skull and Puck almost closed his eyes and purred like his damn cat. “You’re not a bad guy, Puckerman. A little lost maybe, but if you really want to belong here I need your loyalty.”

“I’m loyal!” Puck insisted, because lame or not Columbus was home now and if there was one thing Puck was it was loyal.

“You weren’t last night.” She tugged on his hair again as if to reprimand him for the lie. She did it again for each example as she added, “you weren’t acting like you belonged in my guard when you were so concerned about what _Westerville’s_ alpha wanted, that you allowed a new convert under our jurisdiction to get in a brawl with Balaur’s coven and kill one of them! You definitely weren’t thinking like one of us when you let Blaine Anderson walk out of here with him and leave us to deal with Balaur’s wrath. Do you have any idea what it would mean if they declared war on us? For the pack? For the people of this city?”

Puck swallowed hard with each reminder of his failure. He wasn’t an idiot, he knew the truce between the three races was fragile at best, that The Guild held them all together peacefully only by being merciless with those who broke the rules of engagement. Because breaking the rules the very guild had been founded on could mean the end of their union, and a return to the dark ages when they warred against each other with humans caught helplessly in the middle. Not that the humans appreciated it much, but the peace treaty had been written to protect them too. It made harming humans unprovoked (as well as many other actions) against the rules, and therefore punishable by The Guild council.

Last night a lycan from their pack—for Kurt was one of theirs until he either officially turned down his birthright to a place in the pack or swore allegiance to another—had attacked a vampire unprovoked and mauled her. They would have to answer for that. Kurt would have to answer for it, and the girl’s coven wouldn’t be pleased to learn that Kurt was no longer accessible to stand trial.

Seeing his gulp, Rachel took a step forward and came to his defense. She was obviously unsure of what was happening between them and nervous to find out what Shelby would do to Puck, who had failed in his duties so massively that he couldn’t even defend it to himself.

“It’s my understanding that the convert, Kurt, is as good as mated to alpha Anderson,” Rachel reminded the older woman, placing a hand on the arm that was holding Puck by the hair, gently but insistently tugging it away. Puck was a bit confused when Shelby responded to the younger woman’s grip and let go of her hold on him. On the one hand he was impressed with Berry’s nerve, and on the other he was irritated with her for interfering with what had felt so deliciously good. Neither woman seemed to be taking much notice of him now. Rachel’s eyes were for Shelby as she went on.

“I think I speak for the entire city when I say that Puck was smart not to interfere with alpha Anderson’s decision to relocate Kurt to Westerville. We’d be at war with Westerville _and_ Balaur’s coven in that case, and nothing against Alpha Shue, but I don’t think he has the necessary skills to handle such a high stakes predicament.”

Puck snorted at the understatement of the year. Then as Rachel’s words really began to sink in he flushed; because, while he sort of agreed with Shelby that he had majorly fucked this up, it was surprisingly nice to hear someone say he may have done the right thing after all.

“I understand that Rachel,” Shelby responded to her daughter with a sigh, her heels clicking as she paced once across the floor and then back. “I understand mating instincts. But we have a duty to protect the lycans who call this city home. Mr. Hummel was a resident of Columbus when he was bitten and that means from that point on he was one of us. Should I let every horny alpha who takes a liking to a sub in this city make off with them to avoid getting them upset?”

“But the situation is different Shelby. I agreed with letting Blaine take Kurt to Westerville because—”

“What do you mean you agreed?”Puck couldn’t help interjecting. _“_ You shrieked at me for an hour until Santana threatened to muzzle you.”

“—is _because_ ,” Rachel talked over him with a glare, “a woman was going to die if we didn’t get her help quickly, and I for one did not want to have to explain to Balaur, that we let one of his daughters die because we were too busy squabbling over who had a right to the man that killed her.”

“The daughter of Balaur…” Shelby considered with eyes narrowed, and Puck knew she’d finally caught on to what he and Rachel had been trying to find an opportunity to tell her. “She wasn’t dead when you found her?”

“Nope, but just about,” Puck informed her, noting the relief that washed over the other woman’s face. “Santana knows a good healer. She thought if we could save the woman’s life Balaur might go easier on Kurt.”

Shelby nodded, considering the new information with a tight frown. “Where is she now?” she asked and this time Rachel was the one to answer.

“With Santana. Her place was closest and the woman was so badly injured we were afraid to move her far.” Seeing Shelby’s scowl intensify, Rachel hastily added, “Blaine’s second, Wes, as well as another prominent member of their guard helped us move her. They are aware of the situation and have promised that Westerville will aide us in dealing with Balaur however they can, as they are grateful of our understanding regarding their alpha’s unconventional courtship of our pack brother.” Shelby laughed sardonically at that but Rachel went on.

“Don’t you see? It’s not in their best interest either for an entire coven to be out for Kurt Hummel’s blood, not now that Blaine has claimed him.”

Distantly Puck heard Shelby sigh again. She was saying something about how fucked they’d all be if the girl died, but Puck couldn’t hear any of it. Puck had frozen. Hummel, Rachel had said Kurt’s last name was Hummel, and that was really bad. Like, colossally bad. It was bad because while Puck had been roaming he’d spent eight months working in Lima, at Hummel Tires & Lube, and had gotten pretty close to another guy at the garage, the owners stepson, Finn Hudson. They still talked when they could and Finn was always urging him to connect with his stepbrother now that Puck had settled in Columbus.

It had never occurred to him to think of Finn’s Kurt when Wes had called and asked him for help detaining a man who shared the name. Kurt wasn’t an unusual name, and even if the man he’d ‘met’ the night before had struck him as vaguely familiar looking, when he’d still been human to look at, he’d still been a far cry from the high school kid with baby fat Finn kept pictures of in his wallet.

There had to be more than one Kurt Hummel in Columbus right? Puck desperately hoped so, but he kind of figured not. His luck just didn’t run that way.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but good job both of you.” Puck snapped out of his internal panic just in time to find Shelby by his front door and staring at Rachel with something like pride. “You’re finally thinking like a pack leader. If Anderson is so insistent on mating with this guy without following any of the rules, he can deal with the mess. I’ll be sending Balaur his way the next time he comes knocking.”

Rachel beamed as Shelby turned and exited but before she could follow her out Puck grabbed her arm. He had questions he needed answers to yesterday!

“How do you know Kurt’s last name is Hummel?”

“Because I asked his companion at the club last night,” Rachel replied, bemused at his urgency. “Really Noah, I’m surprised you didn’t think to gather any Intel on the potential mate of the alpha of _the_ single most prized territory in the world. I realize you don’t share my ambition to be alpha-major, but even—”

Puck really didn’t have time for another listen to Rachel Berry’s five point plan to wrest control of the pack from Shuster’s hands, though admittedly she’d probably do a better job.

“Bigger problems here Rach,” he interrupted, ignoring her dark scowl. “So when you were grilling his girlfriend, did you find out anything about his family? They’re here in Columbus right?”

God he hoped Blaine’s Kurt had a family here in Columbus and _not_ in Lima.

“It was a club, Noah! I could hardly ask such personal questions without coming off as odd,” Rachel scoffed and Puck groaned.

“Are you kidding me? You’re the queen of odd.” Rachel looked weirdly hurt for a moment but she began to smile at the corners of her mouth when he added, “you, letting something like manners get in your way when you’re on a mission, _that’s_ what’s odd. You’re way too driven for that.”

“Okay, well, I did do some covert digging. I pretend to have a crush on him. Women love to gab about their friends when they think you have a crush on them,” she recounted smugly. “I managed to learn some basics. Despite sharing a love of the arts and an occupation in theater, Kurt Hummel is not my soulmate, seeing as he is very _very_ gay. Oh, and he and his friend met in Lima where they both went to high school. So if he has any family I assume they are still there. I plan on running an extensive background check…”

But Puck was no longer listening to her. Because, _shit_.

-*-*-

Kurt opened his eyes slowly and winced as bright sunlight assaulted his pupils. He turned and opened them again, blinking the room slowly into focus. He put together very quickly that he was waking up on a very large, very soft bed, and that the bed was not his own. A jolt of alarm went through him as he franticly tried to remember where he was and how he had gotten there. Even as his mind raced, his other senses brought him clues.

His eyes took in colors: the many rich shades of brown and red, the classic compliment of brassy gold tones, and the pop of royal blue. The room was richly appointed without being overtly extravagant. Nothing was new. All of the wood furniture looked antique. Though everything in the room was carefully polished and obviously kept up by someone, everything from the frame on the giant mirror reflecting back at him, to the brass of the mounted lamps, showed the wear of generations of use.

His ears took in sound: his own pounding heart. Beyond that and growing distant, the sound of shoes clicking against hardwood floor accompanied by the distinctive rattles of dishes. A woman down the hall was humming as she swept. Trees were rustling outside the window. A man was hitting something rhythmically and cursing.

Lastly, with an instinctive sniff, his nose brought him scent: oil in the lamp by the bed. Someone had baked apple strudel. There was a plate of it by the bed with a glass of water. There were roses in the vase on the table by the sette. Several people had come and gone through the room while he slept. The room smelled like Blaine.

Kurt let his eyes drift closed again and inhaled deeply, feeling a fine quivering in his belly as he came to grips with the fact that yes, though he’d only been face to face with the man twice, he knew what Blaine Anderson smelled like. He knew because he was a lycan and he had a superior sense of smell and for whatever reason, probably something to do with wolves, his brain now catalogued and tagged such things.

He was covered in Blaine’s scent, sleeping in Blaine’s bed, so he could safely assume he was in Blaine’s house. He had gotten there because last night he’d turned into a wolf and he’d… No! His mind veered away from the violent images that rushed to greet him with the memory of his transformation. He fought the sudden urge to be sick and clenched his teeth. He wouldn’t think about it. What was the point? It was over. It was done. He had to figure out what he was going to do now.

He couldn’t just curl into a ball and let things happen to him. That had already gotten someone killed. So Kurt kept going.

He’d run away after…after _that._ He’d wanted to run to his family, but he’d known he couldn’t. He’d been afraid of what his father might do to a crazed monster that showed up on the doorstep covered in blood. He’d been so terrified and alone, just wanting to die, when he’d heard… _Rex_.

Kurt’s eyes snapped open.

It had been Blaine, actually, because when he followed the howls it was Blaine and not his beloved pet he had found but…

But that was impossible, he argued with himself. He tried to get his heart to stop racing again, but it was hard to do considering all month he’d been telling himself it was impossible that he was lycan and that was horribly untrue.

The only thing Rex and wolf Blaine shared in common was the fact that they both were big and black and yet, Kurt had _known_ it was Rex when he’d heard the wolf, _Blaine_ , singing that first time. It was the reason he’d answered. He’d needed a friend so badly and there he’d been, calling for him. Was it really so impossible?

He’d not actually known for sure whether Blaine was lycan or not, and yet he’d instantly recognized the wolf as him last night hadn’t he? If Kurt had been right about that, why couldn’t he be right about Rex too?

Determinedly his eyes found the vase of roses on the end table by the sette. They were red and yellow, arguably to compliment the red and gold tones in the room, but oh so coincidently his favorite combination of colors for rose bouquets. He’d told Rex one afternoon, that the yellow stood for friendship and devotion and the red for undying love. He recalled that afternoon going through his old scrapbooks, Rex’s head in his lap as Kurt recalled all his old plans for the marriage that was never to be. He’d been sad, but he’d also realized for the first time that he was glad it had fallen apart with Eric when it had. He only wanted to walk down the aisle once, and this way at least he still had a chance to find the person who really was meant for him, someone who really was his lover _and_ his best friend.

There were red and yellow roses in that vase.

Next, as if his psyche was hell bent on making the world an even more uncertain place and frightening himself further, Kurt’s eyes found the plate of food waiting by the bed. Wasn’t apple strudel his favorite ‘pick me up’ breakfast? Hadn’t he indulged on countless mornings after rough nights, winking at Rex as he whispered not to tell on him for taking another slice? Hadn’t those too knowing beautiful honeyed eyes always begged for a bite and followed him around the kitchen in hopes that he’d drop half of it for him to gobble up? Kurt smiled as he remembered those mornings, the way those puppy dog eyes always melted his resolve and he’d end up giving the dog more than half of it even though it was terrible for him.

He looked at the plate of warm pastry and noted with a sinking sensation in his stomach that it was even drizzled with his favorite cream cheese icing. The smile bled away from his face and every bit of warmth he’d felt only a moment ago was replaced by a creeping chill. Okay then. All things considered… he had to accept the fact that he had no idea what he could trust anymore. It appeared that his dog was in fact… not a dog. He’d taken home a werewolf and let it sleep in his bed and hear all of his silly woes.

His face flushed a dark red as he recounted with horror all of the things he’d admitted to the animal, thinking it could never betray his confidence. Oh god, he’d had a _werewolf_ living with him for all that time! He was too thrown to worry about his lapse in political correctness. He’d brought a man who could change into a ferocious animal (and apparently a common dog as well) into his home. He couldn’t stop his brain from counting all the ways he or someone close to him could have been hurt, or all the things Blaine could have learned about him in that time and could now use against him. He couldn’t help but feel invaded. Every good memory he had from the last year was tarnished because all along, what he’d put the most trust in was not to be trusted.

He gripped the sheets beneath him and bit back tears. He wasn’t going to fall apart. He had to figure out why Blaine had pretended to be a dog. Oh god if all of them could do that! How was that safe? Why had Blaine bumped into him that day at Brewers? Absolutely nothing could be written off as coincidence anymore. Had Blaine been following him before Kurt and Finn went to Tail & Paw? What could this lycan possibly want with him?

And then it dawned on him.

How had he gotten this way?

He’d not been born lycan. That was the only thing he was sure of right now. But somehow he was lycan now and it had all started with Blaine. Kurt scrambled up out of the bed, stumbling when he realized mid motion that he was stark naked, and falling to the floor on hands and knees. He was naked. Why was he naked? Oh yeah, because he’d turned into a beast under the full moon. Apparently now he was a hundred percent okay with letting Blaine and anything else with a dick fuck him into oblivion, because that’s what animals did. So much of the last month was making sense now, and it was too much. He had to get out!

He was terrified of what this unknown predator wanted with him, and he didn’t care how _un_ PC he was being, dammit! He’d been in that body, he’d felt those urges, he’d brutally murdered a woman whose screams he could still hear echoing in his ears and last month he’d been perfectly human. This was not him! He didn’t fuck absolute strangers and kill people while they screamed… oh… oh god he had to be sick. He remembered where the bathroom was on instinct, from when he’d been looking over the room earlier, and he rushed to it just in time to heave into the toilet. When his stomach was finally empty he just lay there, his cheek pressed to the cool porcelain and tears streaming hot down his cheeks.

He knew what monsters looked like. Blaine had made him a monster like him, and Kurt hadn’t been able to do a single thing to stop it. He didn’t even remember how it happened. God, for all he knew Blaine had been slipping stuff in his food every night. Blaine could have done anything to him and Kurt would have been defenseless. How could he possibly have protected himself from a threat he didn’t know existed?

A sob wrenched its way out of Kurt’s throat and he slapped a hand over his mouth. No crying. No. He had to get out now and… go where? Where would he go? Would anyone be safe near him? Kurt gripped the rim of the toilet tighter, shaking his head against the thought. He didn’t want to hurt anybody. He didn’t want to be this _thing,_ and he didn’t care if maybe it was true that not every lycan was bad. _He_ was bad, and if he was dangerous he should be locked away somewhere where he couldn’t hurt anyone else.

It was due to his distress that Kurt never heard the sound of the bedroom door opening, or the curious footsteps that crept towards the bathroom. His nose was clogged with the putrid scent of his own puke, so he never caught the whiff of honey and toast that the draft carried in.

-*-*-

Beth Fabray had never seen a grown man cry. It was upsetting in its strangeness, each broken sound emitting from the curled figure on the bathroom floor making her increasingly more uncomfortable. She couldn’t shake the urge to walk up and hug him, the way her mom did when she got so upset that she couldn’t keep it all in any more. She hated not being able to keep the tears in. It made all the others think they were right about her, that she was too weak to be a proper wolf.

Despite all her efforts not to Beth had cried more than once in her ten years of life, and no matter what they said she’d seen her classmates cry on occasion too. She’d never seen any of the adults cry. Even the lowest omega wouldn’t weep in front of a cub.

But this adult didn’t know she was there, so maybe she should leave. He wouldn’t be happy knowing she’d seen him in such a private moment. Even the alphas needed time to themselves sometimes, and the last thing she wanted to do was embarrass Blaine’s mate on his first day in the pack.

That’s why she’d snuck out of school and up to the main house. It had escaped none of the students notice when the adults had all gone quiet last night, when they’d all started breathing in symphony and gazing out at the night sky in the same direction. The cubs in Beth’s group were old enough to understand pack-to-alpha bonds, and they’d pieced together that something was going on with Blaine. For the rest of the night the adults had been whispering excitedly about it, and the students had picked up on enough to fuel their own excited speculations.

Blaine had found a mate. That was big news for everyone. It could also mean a lot of changes, both good and bad, and absolutely everyone had some theory on what was to come. She’d heard Clara’s brother Calvin whispering to her that he thought Blaine’s mate was one of the strays that had made camp in Westerville last winter. It worried her that Blaine’s mate might be one of _them,_ because if those strays were who everyone thought they were… then Blaine’s mate might not like her mom being part of the pack, or Beth herself for that matter.

It wasn’t like all of the others liked her mom either. They tolerated her because Blaine did, and because even though they couldn’t trust her mother’s humanity, even the oldest and most traditional of lycans couldn’t quite bring themselves to see a cub turned away. Beth was a lycan child who needed pack like any other lycan, not to mention her chances of survival out there in the world with just her mother for protection were practically nonexistent.

Beth knew that many of the elders thought Blaine shouldn’t have allowed Quinn to stay human, that she should either have been converted or sent away and Beth given to a proper lycan family in order to become a proper wolf. If Blaine’s mate thought the same it could mean very bad things for her and mom.

But this man was nothing like the dark imposing figure she’d been imagining. He looked small curled over the toilet, and startlingly breakable, like he was the one made of porcelain and about to shatter with the next tap.

Beth took a step into the room and recoiled as a brutal wave of thoughts and emotion washed over her. She sometimes still projected her inner thoughts without meaning to, usually when she was nervous or upset, but none of the adults did. No matter how strongly they felt about something they’d never let just anyone look inside them like that. They only shared what they needed to communicate when they no longer had mouths capable of speech.

But this man was screaming bare, his insides split open for the viewing, and the emotions he was spewing out were so intense they were petrifying. How could anyone stand to feel like that? Tears sprung to her eyes and Beth turned and ran.

~*~*~

“You think he’ll stop before the kid faints?” John Mitchell asked the group gathered around the practice pen. Guard wolves and house staff alike had collected there to watch Wes spar with his protégé. It was something of a tradition for guard alphas to meet up at Anderson manor after a full moon for training sessions, especially those with protégés. Those who had been on duty needed the chance to expel their energy, and those who hadn’t needed the exercise to sharpen their minds and drive away the fog left over from the nights activities. But it was unusual for Wes to demand first use of the pen, and for a practice session to go on as long (and with as much intensity) as this one had. The sound of their battle had drawn everybody in hearing distance.

You could always tell which of the protégés had gotten themselves into trouble during the full moon, as their alpha-masters tended to punish them during the next day of training. It had escaped no one’s notice when Jeff had arrived to breakfast late that morning, looking like he’d run straight from the shower. No one had missed Wes’ dark glower either. How a wolf spent his full moon was up to him, but Guard protocol was that you showed up on time the next morning and not reeking of the nights excess. 

Blaine had seen it a hundred times before. Even he’d stumbled into the dining room a post moon morning or two, having rolled out of someone’s bed straight into the shower only to have to run not to miss breakfast.

His brother Cooper had been his alpha-master, and even if his brother had been more amused by him than not, Cooper had still made Blaine sweat for it at practice. Then again Cooper had always expected more of him than the other alphas expected of their protégés, because they were the Alpha’s sons. They could only be the best.

Wes by comparison was fairer, but he still was not an easy alpha-master by any means. He was an exacting perfectionist on a good day, let alone a post moon day where he’d been on active duty the night before. But something was different about master and protégé today. Wes was putting Jeff through one of their toughest drills, man to wolf combat training, and he wasn’t holding anything back as the training exercise progressed. Frankly it looked like he was trying to bite the kid’s ass off with his teeth.

Man to wolf fighting was pretty much as awful as it sounded. The master was allowed to take their wolf skin, while the protégé remained constricted in the form of a man. The point was to prepare them to defend themselves even if they were unable to shift, but the grim reality was that there wasn’t much a frail human body could do against a wolf.

Jeff was doing the best he could, sprinting around the pen at inhuman speeds and using the random “weapons” scattered throughout to ward off his opponent, but Wes had already scored several hits and the boy was visibly tiring. Blaine watched them, as he had countless times before, but this time around he couldn’t help but think there was something different about Jeff. He didn’t seem resigned to getting his ass chewed on like most protégés would in this situation. He seemed as determined to beat the snot out of his master as his master was to beat him.

His face was red with exertion, his blond hair rucked and standing on end where it wasn’t plastered down with sweat to his brow. The sight of his face bleeding freely from where Wes had landed a strike with his claws, coupled with the lid of a metal trash bin that he was holding like a shield with a white knuckled grip, made him look like some pagan warrior sprung out of some weird contemporary painting. 

Modern page boy fends off wolf with urban debris.

Blaine and the others cringed as Wes chased Jeff into a corner and charged. They watched with grim expectation as Wes’ large wolf body slammed against Jeff’s smaller frame before he could bring the trash lid up to shield himself, and wolf and boy went crashing to the ground.

Wes wasted no time wounding his fallen foe with vicious slashes and bites across his chest, but Jeff served himself well by soldiering through the pain and twisting his tender front out of the line of fire and… Blaine’s eyes widened as he realized that the blond teenager was in fact, actually reaching for the trash lid he’d dropped when Wes had pinned him.

A collective flinch went through the crowd of spectators as Jeff brought the metal disk up and rammed it against his opponent with all the force he could muster. Even in his weaker form Jeff had more strength than a normal human male, and when the metal crashed against Wes’s ribs everyone could hear the crunch of bone fracturing.

“Jesus Christ. Didn’t anyone tell them this is just practice?” John whistled low and beside him his protégé Trent gulped. The boy looked pale enough to faint, and Blaine decided that whatever was going on between Wes and his protégé, it was time to intervene. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled, apparently just in time because Wes had decided he was actually going to murder Jeff right then and there on the practice field. The wolf had the adolescent lycan pinned again, this time with his claws sunk deep and his jaws clamped threateningly around his throat. There was no doubt about who would have won the contest if the fight had been real. Jeff would be one dead alpha.

“That’s enough guys,” Blaine ordered them sharply. He didn’t expect Wes to do anything so horrible as to actually kill his protégé in a fit of pique, but he wanted it clear that he’d crossed a line he shouldn’t cross as a master. “Battle goes to Wes. Both of you can hit the showers.”

Wes released his grip on Jeff’s throat and limped away, fury still evident in every tense line of his body. Jeff made a frustrated grunt and pounded his fist against the grass.

“What do you care?!” Blaine started in shock as the teenager shouted after his master’s departing back. “It was the full moon. W-who cares if I let some guy fuck me? It doesn’t mean any—”

Blaine and the others watched as Wes, now naked and two legged once more, rounded on his protégé with a speed to make a body’s eyeballs spin.

“Of course it matters!” The naked beta male thundered at the blond boy kneeling in the grass, almost falling over as he clutched his side. “You’re not a child, so stop acting like it. You’re an alpha, Jeff! What do you think it means when you spread your legs for someone? Of course it means something, of course it does! You can’t be such an idiot that you don’t see how stupid it is to let your enemy fuck with you.”

Blaine’s eyes narrowed as he warily approached his best friend and the teenager he was charged with mentoring. He knew that how a master taught was up to the master, and he didn’t know exactly what had happened (or who Jeff had slept with) that had incensed Wes so, but he did know that now, in front of the others, wasn’t the time to be having this discussion.

Jeff’s cheeks had flushed a bright red with shame at his master’s outburst and his eyes darted to the crowd of lycans watching behind Blaine with curious eyes. Alphas sleeping with other alphas wasn’t rare. More and more of them were mating now, the more scarce betas became. Plenty of alphas still preferred choosing omegas as partners, but omegas were sheltered by the rest of the pack and didn’t take to casual liaisons as well as alphas or betas. They tended to need commitment and dependability more than the other two, so a lot of alphas preferred the quick but intense couplings they got from sleeping with other alphas. Only one could be dominant however and no alpha liked to admit they’d submitted sexually, even for a night.

Blaine placed a hand on Wes’ shoulder, drawing him away from the teenager shaking on the ground with rage. He didn’t remove his hand even when Wes snarled at him.

“That’s enough Wes; the kid’s had enough for one day.” He didn’t need a public shaming on top of things. He glared pointedly at those gawkers in his house staff and one by one they turned to go back to their business. To Blaine’s surprise however, Jeff wasn’t grateful for his interference. He surged to his feet with an angry hiss and all but stomped his feet at them both.

“I’m not some cub anymore! Don’t treat me like I’m still wet behind the ears. I’m older than either of you were when you started to lead this pack!”

“You better watch that tone puppy,” John warned from the sidelines with a darkening scowl. “That’s your alpha you’re talking to, and your master. Show them some respect.”

“I-I’m sorry.’ Jeff looked momentarily chastised and very frustrated with himself. “I just… He might be my enemy, but at least Nick doesn’t treat me like a stupid child. Wes I just want—”

“To be some MacTere’s bitch? To betray your pack? To hurt everything we’ve spilled our blood for?” Wes spat before the boy could finish. “If that’s what you want keep at it. You’re doing a great job.”

The blood drained out of Jeff’s face and Blaine knew that not one of the men gathered there missed the wave of hurt that emanated off of him. The boy collected himself quickly, raining his emotions under control and shutting himself off from the others as he nodded quickly and muttered a soft, ‘fine’ before stomping off towards the gate of the pen.

 _‘I shouldn’t have said that.’_ Though Wes had not turned from watching Jeff stride off, Blaine heard the private shame of his thoughts. He saw the tension in his friend’s shoulders and the sorrow in his eyes that he wouldn’t let any of the others close enough to see. Remembering the others, Blaine glanced at John, Harmony, Luke and their protégés and sent them private instructions to take their practice to the academy training yard. David was the only one he allowed permission to stay. When the others had filed out Wes heaved a heavy sigh and ran a hand through his sweaty hair.

“You’re going to apologize to him?”

Wes glared at him for a moment and Blaine just waited for his friend to accept the truth of his words. Finally the beta male nodded shortly.

“Yes I am,” Wes relented and Blaine nodded, accepting the matter as dealt with. He could always count on Wes to do what had to be done.

“So you’ve confirmed that Sebastian’s band of strays are from clan MacTere?” Blaine asked, addressing a far more worrisome issue. Sebastian Smythe was still living in Westerville and still refused to make any of the peace keeping gestures that would have assured the alpha on whose territory he was camped, that he was only peacefully passing through. It might not have been so bad if the rogue would just ‘pass through’ already, but he’d rented a town house for god’s sake. He was all but shouting his intent to challenge Blaine’s authority. He had reports from trusted sources that more and more strays were coming to town, camping out in that house. Blaine couldn’t afford to let the situation linger on. It had been one thing while he was in exile; it was another issue all together now that he’d been back for a month and Sebastian still refused to meet with him and publicly submit to his authority.

Sooner or later he’d either have to get Sebastian to follow protocol or drive him and the rest of the strays out of Westerville. There wasn’t any other choice.

“Oh yes,” Wes answered his question with a grim smile. “One of those flea bitten bastards is a Nicolas Duval. One of _the_ Duvals if any of what he bragged to Jeff was true. Jeff might be thinking more with his dick than his brain at the moment… but there’s no one whose information I trust more.”

Blaine’s stomach tensed with unease. The Duval family was French, not to mention ancient, with strong connections to the Smythes, an equally old and powerful family. Both were the descendants of powerful Norman clan wolves, throw backs from a black age when wolf packs had been formed by bloodlines rather than regional ties. Back in the Middle Ages lycans had sworn fealty to clans. The clan’s had been made up of several pack families joining together, the larger the stronger, and the clans with the most territory and wealth had held the most power. They’d operated in the world under the guise of humans for the most part, but they had regarded humans as weak and therefore contemptible. Humans had sometimes been playthings for powerful lords, but most often they had simply been regarded as prey. 

Humans had not forgotten the brutality of the dark ages.

Eventually The Guild had come along and brought relative peace by putting an end to the wolf clans, scattering the vampire hordes, and disbanding the black covens, but not without sacrifices. Those who had power never gave it up easily, but none had fought so fervently against change as the MacTere. Even when they had lost, many of them had refused to submit to guild law, preferring to forever be strays rather than to integrate into the new regional packs.

Blaine hadn’t been the best student of history, but even he knew enough not to trust that the MacTere’s had mellowed with age and forgotten their need for vengeance. There had to be reason why even after all these hundreds of years families like the Smythes and the Duvals still chose to be strays when there was no harder or more shameful existence for a lycan. Until they submitted to The Guild they would always be a threat to the peace The Guild was fighting so hard to maintain for them all.

“Right then,” Blaine sighed as he came to the only decision there was to make. “We’ll be paying Smythe a visit to—”

“Blaine!”

Blaine tapered off as the high and thin voice of a young girl rang out across the yard. Both Ws and David turned with him to watch Beth Fabray come streaking across the yard, her blond hair flying and her eyes streaming with tears.

-*-*-

Escaping the house he was imprisoned in was not as hard as Kurt had anticipated. His biggest problem was his nakedness, because there wasn’t any use in getting out of Blaine’s house (or wherever he was) if he was only going to get arrested for indecent exposure. He hadn’t wanted to touch any of Blaine’s things, because he still couldn’t shake the sick feeling of invasion clinging to him and he already felt like Blaine was smothering him and he barely knew the man.

 _Lycan_ , Kurt’s brain reminded him. ‘ _He’s lycan and he snuck into your home for who knows why. And now you’re lycan too.’_

Why? Why had Blaine done this to him? What could he possibly want with someone like him? He wasn’t important. He was a nobody and nobody but his family and a few friends would care what happened to him.

It was focusing time. Yes. He’d had his cry, but time was ticking and if he had to escape he couldn’t do it naked. So Kurt had gone through Blaine’s closet and found himself something to wear. Although there were some surprisingly stylish selections in Blaine’s closet, Kurt was interested in whatever he could pull on fastest. He grabbed a pair of track-pants that ended up coming just a bit short on his ankles and a white t-shirt that was snug on his chest and shoulders. His search for shoes was a bit more difficult as Blaine’s feet turned out to be smaller than his, and his shoe collection was the most thorough mixture of sandals and flats Kurt had ever encountered. It was hard to find a pair of shoes that didn’t feel like they’d slip off the first attempt at a sprint, but he eventually settled on a pair of white moccasins that, while horribly pinched, at least had a sturdy back to keep his feet from flying out of them.

After that it was disturbingly easy to leave the mansion, for it was an honest to god mansion he’d found himself in, Blaine called home. He followed his nose to the nearest exit, which happened to be a propped open window just down the hall from the bottom of the first staircase he found. He climbed out the window because he didn’t want to risk searching for a door that might be locked and risk running into someone. He hadn’t come across anyone yet, but he had only to listen to know that there were people moving about in nearby hallways. Why hadn’t he realized sooner how much better his hearing was getting?

He knew which way to turn because he could hear what sounded like a fight coming from the back. The chilling growls that he just knew came from a wolf combined with what sounded like pained human grunts made his belly cramp with fear. It sounded like someone was being attacked. Should he help? Could he help? What could he possibly do by himself?

He’d crept forward before he could really think it through, carried forward no doubt by some twisted hero complex he’d be kicking himself over later, until he’d reached the corner of the house. Heart pounding with the fear of discovery, he carefully peered around the wall.

The back yard was immense and most of it was taken up by what appeared to be some sort of athletic training ground. There was something that looked like an obstacle course, a pair of what was possibly tennis courts, an arena, and there at the edge of the glittering lake was something that looked like a boat house. There was a crowd of people gathered around the arena (the sort he’d seen once or twice in those horse movies Tina sometimes dragged him to) and they were watching a massive black wolf stalk a boy who couldn’t be any older than sixteen.

The haunting sight instantly froze Kurt in place and he watched with growing horror as the wolf slowly circled the comparatively tiny human male. The boy was bleeding, Kurt could smell the blood, and the wolf was hungry. He knew it was excited by the blood because the smell of it made something in _him_ stir and he was yards away. As if he’d had any doubts that whatever beast had taken him over the night before wasn’t alive and well, it stirred, it wanted to hunt, and the knowledge made him want to be sick again.

Kurt’s stomach plummeted as the wolf suddenly lunged on top of the boy and he had to slap his hand over his mouth to smother a cry of shock as he quickly shut his eyes and looked away. He kept his eyes tightly clenched shut. He couldn’t watch somebody get eaten by a werewolf. Not after last night. Not when that could as easily be him in there. He had no idea why he’d been brought here or why these people wanted him. He could do nothing for this boy and he had to go. He had to get home.

He turned the other way on shaking legs, striding towards the front of the house and away from the barbaric scene he’d stumbled upon. Where the back of the house had been surrounded by lake water Kurt soon discovered that the rest of it was surrounded by wood, and he sprinted into the trees as fast as his legs would carry him.

-*-*-

Blaine left Beth with David and gave him instructions to escort her back to Dalton. The child was inconsolable, though he suspected that had more to do with a transference of Kurt’s feelings than it had to do with her own. It had been hard to get the story out of the sobbing cub, but Blaine was able to piece together that Beth had snuck off school grounds to get a look at Kurt and found him awake and in distress in Blaine’s bedroom. Cubs were sensitive, and Kurt didn’t know enough yet not to project every thought he had or strong emotion he was feeling. His panic had overwhelmed poor Beth who had run immediately to find Blaine, convinced that the man in his room was dying.

Blaine hurried back to his room, unhappy that Kurt had woken in a strange place without him there to ease some of his fears. His command to sleep should have been strong enough to keep him slumbering until expressly ordered to wake, but then again Blaine had always known Kurt was strong willed. It was one of the most attractive things about him, the contradiction of vulnerability and steel that ran through his core. He probably should have guessed that Kurt wouldn’t simply stay put like a good boy until Blaine was ready to deal with him.

Which was why, when he rushed into his room, apology already on the tip of his tongue, he shouldn’t have been all that surprised to find his clothes strewn about and Kurt already gone.

But of course he was.

His heart lurched into his throat but he beat down the flare of panic and immediately turned in the doorway. Kurt had run. Of course he had. He was obviously scared and had Blaine been in his place he would have run too. But Kurt belonged here, with Blaine, where it was safe and where there was pack. So Blaine was going to find him and bring him back.

That’s all there was to it.

-*-*-

The sandy coated wolf watched a pair of greys trot past him, unaware that above them an enemy lay concealed. Their pace was lazy, their inspection of the area so rushed that he was tempted to jump out of hiding and teach them a lesson about the importance of vigilance. But that was the entire reason why Sebastian Smythe always waited until after the full moon to penetrate the forest. The guard was always thin and those that were on duty were definitely not at their best. Lycan’s were always at their weakest right after the full moon, having expended all of their strength in excess the night before.

Sebastian wasn’t exempt from that either, but he wasn’t looking for a fight today. Contrary to his usual aims, he was looking to avoid battle actually. Not forever. Oh he had no doubt that there would be bloodshed eventually, but when there was it would be on his terms. He was going to Anderson Manor to prove the point that he could, that Pack Westerville was not as impenetrable as it liked to think, and then to lay himself low at the feet of its alpha to appease the laws of their precious guild.

It was humiliating but he could stomach the shame of it, if it meant that later he would triumph. He’d prove to all of these dogs how stupid it was to believe that their rules would protect them. What was a bow really but a gesture?

When he was sure that the pair of greys was far enough ahead he slowly rose from his crouch, ready to continue on his way. The snapping of a twig gave him pause, his body going still as he waited and watched. His eyes roved the wood around him for the source of the increasingly discordant sound of snapping twigs and harsh breathing.

Just below the hill Sebastian crouched upon, pushing his way out of a particularly thick cluster of bushes, a man appeared, stumbling clumsily out of the brush and hissing as some of its thornier branches raked his skin.

The wind wasn’t blowing right for Sebastian to smell him, but at first glance Sebastian guessed the man was human. There were cubs stealthier than this moron, and it was obvious that he had no idea where he was going.

 _‘I know it’s post moon, but god Anderson’s practically begging for someone to take his territory if a human can bumble their way this far.’_ Sebastian thought to himself as snuck his way down the incline and circled the unsuspecting man. As he drew closer he began to think that he might have been too quick in his assumptions about the strange man trudging his way through the forest. The change in altitude had brought the man’s sent to Sebastian, and the wolf in him was eager to get closer to the source of that utterly captivating scent.

He was beta-male, and if the notes of that scent were anything to go by he was young, strong, and unbridled, which Sebastian liked just fine. He was more than enough alpha to make any bitch come to heel and he liked a challenge above all. Pretty as this little morsel was, he’d be all too easy to swallow up and that was just no fun. No, Sebastian had much bigger dogs to house train; he was more interested in who this guy was and why he was stumbling about the forest like an ape, lost as a hooker’s panties.

Not to mention that he was marked to hell and back in Blaine’s scent.

It had taken Sebastian a bit to recognize the smell for what it was. Because even though he’d tried to learn as much as he could of Westerville’s alpha since his return, Blaine hadn’t been out and about in town as much as Sebastian would have expected of an alpha leader. Nick had it on good authority from that little blond he was fucking that Blaine was spending a lot of time out of town, and if that wasn’t suspicious Sebastian didn’t know what was.

Had Blaine found himself something to play with? The beta was awfully pretty. Sebastian wouldn’t have blamed him for wanting to fuck him, but if that was the case doe face would have to go. Sebastian had plans for Westerville’s current alpha and they didn’t include him forming attachments.

“Ouch.” Ahead of him the beta stumbled and if Sebastian could have rolled his eyes in this body he would have. Jesus this guy was an idiot. Didn’t he know how to walk without waking the whole damn wood? Useless, as Sebastian had decided to call him, picked himself up and bit back actual tears. The desperation and confusion rolling off of him washed over Sebastian in steady waves and he growled low in distaste. How fucking pathetic. Was this how week pack wolves had become? Were they completely unable to even keep a lid on their inner thoughts?

 _‘LosthavetogethomehavetogetoutwheredoIgoscaredscaredscareddon’tstopkeepgoing!’_ Sebastian shook his head, getting a headache from the intensity and speed of the guy’s thoughts.

 _“Where are you trying to go?”_ He asked Useless, grinning as the beta shrieked in surprise and whirled around to figure out where the voice was coming from. Sebastian watched the blood drain from his face as he spotted the enormous tan wolf standing just a few feet behind him. His heart began pounding so hard Sebastian could hear it. Something wasn’t right here. The guys scent was clearly beta but the brown haired male in front of him was quivering like the most submissive of omegas. Didn’t he have any back bone at all?

The beta began to inch backwards, ever so slowly, and Sebastian was glad that at least he had enough sense not to turn his back and try to run.

 _“You’re lost aren’t you?”_ he tried again, taking a step forward for every step the beta took back. His fear at least was entertaining. _“Maybe I can help you,”_ he coaxed the beta, watching the muscles in the man’s throat move as he swallowed thickly and waited for him to gather the courage to speak.

“Y-you can talk?”

What the hell? He hadn’t been expecting that. That was for sure. Sebastian cocked his head and regarded the beta closely. Slowly, it began to dawn on him that the only thing that would make this man’s strangeness make sense was…

 _“You’re a convert.”_ At the instant confusion he felt wafting off of the stranger Sebastian clarified, _“A human turned lycan.”_

“Yes, I think… I-I mean I’ve got to be,” Useless the convert confirmed and Sebastian was all the more intrigued. Not because he gave a shit about Useless, converts were little better than humans and neither were above dirt, but because he hadn’t expected to learn that Blaine had converted someone. Even wolves as domesticated as the ones in Westerville still kept to the old ways when it came to bringing humans into the fold.

Blaine had to be on something if he thought this dough faced little nothing was worthy of wolf blood.

“Please don’t… I mean, I just want to go home. Don’t… hurt me.” Useless pleaded as he continued to back up, the heart already pounding so fiercely in his chest only seeming to get louder with each word. Sebastian shivered, heat pooling in his belly as he drank in the intoxicating scent of his fear.

Fuck, he smelled good. Maybe there was a reason Blaine kept this guy around.

_“And where is home for you, beautiful thing? Tell me, and maybe I can help you get there.”_

“I really don’t think I’m going to do that,” Useless replied with a surprising show of gumption and Sebastian’s grin widened. Maybe Useless was not completely useless then.

 _“And why not, Legs?”_ Sebastian asked as he let himself appreciate the long truly delicious sight of them. He could imagine those wrapped around his waist, oh yes he could.

“Because you’re one of _them!”_ The man snapped, and at the sound of those words Sebastian’s desire began to cool, the disgust in the man’s tone throwing him back to a night years ago when he’d been small and terrified, hiding in the dark while a pair of human devils cornered his mother.

 _‘We should hang her skin above the door’_ , they’d said. _‘That will show them.’_

He growled and the convert froze like a deer, petrified by his golden eyes seething with fury. And then the convert made his first big mistake. He turned and ran.

Sebastian was on him in seconds, his hunting instinct on like a light switch and the converts two legs no match for his swift stride. He leapt onto the pale man’s back, knocking him to the forest floor with a painful thud, and it only took him a second to roll to his feet and regain his footing for another attack. The convert had rolled onto his back and was clutching his wrist with a pained expression, and Sebastian began stalking toward the male, still seething with anger.

Such was his concentration on him that Sebastian didn’t even hear the other wolf approaching until the black figure had leapt between them, its jaws snapping a warning in his face. Sebastian sprang back with a surprised yelp turned snarl as the wolf snapped quickly at various points on his neck and forced Sebastian to scamper backwards to avoid the snaps turning into bites.

Whoever this mother fucker was Sebastian wanted to teach him a lesson. He was just gearing to do that when he realized that the black wolf was not alone. The pair of greys from earlier and a small wolf with a coat not too far in shade from his own were now flanking him. There was one other, but he seemed unconcerned with Sebastian, passing him and going instead to the pale man lying on the ground. Sebastian froze as he recognized the scent of Westerville’s alpha, his midnight coat so black he could have been mistaken for a rip in the fabric of the universe.

Sebastian had never seen Blaine up this close, and for the first time he believed his grandfather’s old stories about the Anderson’s. How they were of noble blood, sons of clan Lienster and traitors to the very blood that made it possible for them to defend this land for centuries. Sebastian was the heir of MacTere, and not a bad looking wolf he’d been told, but he’d never met another lycan he felt was his match before. Blaine was simply an exquisite creature. There was strength and nobility in ever line of his body. Surely he had to know that he was born to conquer? Hadn’t he already proven it when he’d killed his own father and taken this territory for himself?

The alpha’s striking hazel eyes met and glared coldly into his as he crouched over the convert, shielding the shaking human from Sebastian’s view.

 _‘You come onto my land and think to attack what’s mine, Smythe?’_ Blaine finally addressed him, when he had fully inspected the man on the ground, who seemed to think that if he just didn’t move nothing bad would happen to him. Or maybe Blaine had spoken privately to him, Sebastian couldn’t possibly know. What he did know was that he was not in a good spot, and if he wasn’t careful all his plans could blow up in his face if he didn’t make the right moves.

He crouched low, flattening his ears submissively as he apologized for everyone to hear.

_“Your convert doesn’t seem to like us very much and since my mother was killed by humans I took offense to his attitude. I meant you and yours no disrespect.”_

Sebastian was gratified to see the greys at least grow a bit laxer in the shoulders. Humans were a common enemy and there were few wolves that hadn’t felt their bite in some way.

 _“That doesn’t explain what the hell you think you’re doing on our land, Smythe”_ the black wolf Sebastian now recognized as Wesley, Blaine’s Second, snapped and again Sebastian felt the desire to roll his eyes. Some people were so untrusting.

 _“I’ve come to place myself beneath Blaine’s authority on behalf of myself and my clan members. Isn’t that protocol when you enter another alpha’s territory?”_ Sebastian asked him, shaking the dust and dirt out of his coat and feeling a surge of glee when the other wolf sneezed.

_“That is such bullshit Smythe not even a child would swallow it. You’ve had a chance to follow protocol for months and—“_

_“And I have refused on account of your alpha’s absence.”_ Sebastian interrupted the other man’s tirade in a bored but insistent tone. _“Or did you expect me to actually submit to the likes of you, a beta with no blood to speak of? I thought you were joking.”_

Wes lunged at his throat and Sebastian jerked back on instinct, even though he knew the attack was more of a warning than a serious attempt to injure him. The two lycans glared at one another.

One day, Sebastian promised himself. One day.

 _“Keep playing smart with me and I’ll show everyone how special your blood actually is, Smythe”_ Wes threatened with a malicious glint in his amber eyes. _“I bet it sparkles in the sunlight and everything.”_

Rather than dignify that with a reply Sebastian looked to the young sandy coated adolescent and grinned with all his teeth.

_“Your protégé smells a lot like my friend Nick. Have you noticed that?”_

_“Enough!”_ Blaine barked as Wes lunged at him again and both wolves turned their heads to look at him, pulled by the command in his voice. And there it was, true alpha strength. The sort of power Sebastian both coveted for himself and found sexy as hell coming from Blaine who seemed to reek of confidence just by standing there. _“Come here Sebastian.”_

He went because for now, that was what he had to do. The whole way there he thought about how it was going to feel when he made Blaine do this, only for strong beautiful Blaine he would make it special. Sebastian would make him crawl.

When he and Blaine were eye to eye Sebastian lowered himself to the ground and flopped over onto his belly.

-*-*-

When Kurt had escaped not even an hour ago he had thought to himself that he would do anything before he allowed himself to be brought back here. He was back in Blaine’s room, sitting on Blaine’s bed with his knees tucked up to his chest. He realized in retrospect that he’d never had much of a plan, or much of a chance to get away from Blaine in the first place. He had no idea where he was and no way to defend himself against wolves when they caught up to him.

Well… there was one way, but he’d been too scared to utilize that way. The one other time in his life he’d changed into a wolf not only had he thought he was going to die from the pain, he’d been so out of his mind with blood lust that he’d killed someone. Kurt gripped his knees tighter and shoved the memories away. Blaine had promised he wouldn’t be hurt if he went quietly back with them and so here he was. Back where he had started, and terrified of what was to come.

Blaine had become a man again, at least what looked like one, and dressed quickly, explaining that he had a few things to take care of with the lycan that had attacked him in the woods and left promising to be right back.

He’d promised to explain everything to him.

 _‘Like why he pretended to be a dog and how he turned you into one of_ them’ his brain supplied bitterly and he bit back a fresh wave of tears. When was he going to stop crying? He was so tired of it. He’d do anything to go back to normal, back to the days before Rex and the lie of happiness and security. Even the agony of an empty house and a broken heart seemed like a wonderfully normal thing now.

Kurt looked up when he heard footsteps in the hallway, wiping his eyes hastily just as the door open and Blaine appeared, pausing hesitantly before stepping inside and closing it behind him.

“Hi, Kurt,” Blaine greeted him hesitantly, as if Kurt was a delicate, likely to shatter at a loud sound.

Maybe it was because twice now Kurt had seen this relative stranger naked, but something inside him thrummed at the sight of him. Almost as if his inner wolf had decided it was a kitten for the day and was purring with delight. Kurt balled his fists, remembering all too keenly how badly he’d wanted this man to fuck him last night… how that animal inside him would have loved to let this man who had invaded Kurt’s life and left it in ruins screw him until he couldn’t walk.

Who gave a damn if Blaine was beautiful?! His entire life was ruined. He wished he’d never even seen him!

“Why me?” he was almost as surprised as Blaine to hear himself ask. His voice was rough with emotion but quiet, so quiet that Blaine had trouble hearing him. At Blaine’s confused look he asked louder, sharper, angrier, “why did you decide to do this to me?! Did you think I wouln’t fight you? That I’d just let you come into my life and take away _everything?_ Well I won’t. Stop it. Stop it now!”

And just like that, apparently Kurt Hummel was done curling into a ball and crying. He heard himself shouting and felt his body moving as he swung at the slightly shorter male but his brain wasn’t quite properly ordering one moment from the next.

Because the next thing he knew Blaine’s hands were grappling with his smarting fists, and they were toppling to the ground. He didn’t stop, couldn’t stop, as all the fight he had surged to the surface and he followed some rabid logic that told him if he could just pin Blaine down, he could get him to do what he said. He could make Blaine take it all back.

“Kurt! Stop, I—” Blaine swallowed his words with a pain filled grunt as Kurt kneed him viciously in the stomach. Kurt twisted out from Blaine’s heavy weight and finally landed a satisfying punch.

“I trusted you!” He heard himself screaming. “I loved you.”

He had. He had, and that was the reason why his heart was breaking. He realized it in slow motion, on a separate plane even as he poured every ounce of fury in him into hitting Blaine.

“Why,” It was hard to scream when his chest felt so tight but he could no more stop the words than he could the pain. “Why? I want to know why!”

There had been love, not conventional and maybe not romantic but he knew now that he’d been woefully naïve up until that point, to think that love was tied up in those. Yes, he had loved in its purest simplest form and that love had been betrayed.

So he fought, because the only other option was to cry and he’d already cried too much.

But Blaine was stronger, and before he knew it he found himself on his back with both his arms held tightly in Blaine’s hands.

“Kurt, STOP!” Blaine’s voice hit him like a slap and Kurt froze, every muscle in his body locked tight. Blaine’s warm hands cradled his cheeks, thumbs roughly wiping tears that Kurt had no idea had even spilled down his cheeks, as he rasped with a voice emotionally torn, “just stop….please. Just stop.”

Kurt shook his head violently, against stopping, against _everything_ , and shuddered out through a sob, “I c-can’t. I’m afraid. I’m afraid that this time I won’t get back up.”

He didn’t resist when Blaine pulled him into his arms, holding him as close to his body as their clothing would allow.

“Okay.” Kurt wasn’t sure if Blaine’s voice was shaking him or his quivering body was rattling Blaine, but he clung to him and the words rushing out of his lips. “Okay. So just lay here and don’t do anything. Don’t fall and don’t break, you just lay there and don’t do anything but let me hold you. You’re alright. You’re fine. See? Everything is going to be okay.”

He didn’t let go when Blaine pressed desperate kisses to his cheeks, his brow, his lips, all the while insisting that he was okay, that _things_ would be okay. There was a tremble in his voice that declared Blaine a liar but made him feel like a lover, like warmth and stability and everything safe to get lost in. Kurt sagged into his arms and let himself fracture. He let the cracks show because Blaine was holding him tightly and as long as he was doing that, somewhere inside he knew there was no real danger of falling apart.

-*-*-

Blaine loved the feel of Kurt’s hair. He hated to use clichés like silk and satin, but as long as he’d been yearning and dreaming about lying with him like this and running his hands through it, he thought he could be excused for his lack of creative adjectives. Who could think properly with their arms full of beauty?

It wasn’t just that Kurt was strong and attractive, though he was both of those things in spades, it was just that laying there chest to chest with Kurt’s breath tickling his face and his nose nearly touching his, Blaine’s whole being resonated with his presence. Kurt was a stone tossed into his pool, rippling across his skin and sinking down into his core. Kurt was beauty and Kurt was light. Kurt was fire and water and earth and sky. Kurt was mate.

“Is it magic?” Kurt’s soft voice broke the silence and Blaine glanced up to find his bright blue-grey-green eyes regarding him from the bluer side of green.

“Is what magic?”

“The way you make me feel,” Kurt clarified. “You’ve always made me feel so safe, even when I know I shouldn’t feel safe at all.”

“It’s mângâiere,” Blaine explained and Kurt’s brow wrinkled adorably at the foreign word. Blaine couldn’t quite keep the smile off his face. “And that would be Romanian. That’s where they say the first wolfman was born. You know some scientist think we’re actually just super evolved humans?”

“How X-men of them,” Kurt responded dryly and Blaine bit back a grin. “So wait…you actually _are_ Romanian?” Kurt asked after a moment’s pause, and this time Blaine did laugh, remembering their conversation on the phone. It seemed like it had happened a lifetime ago.

“No. I guess I’m Irish if you want to go back far enough in the family tree. My great something or another grandfather Andrew McMorrow came to America in the 1800’s, only he registered himself as Andrew Anderson. So we’ve been Anderson’s ever since.”

“Did he come here because of the famine?” Kurt wondered curiously and Blaine didn’t answer right away. It was strange but in that moment it occurred to him that Kurt was completely innocent. He had no idea what Blaine’s people had suffered at the hands of his, what they were still suffering, and some part of Blaine wanted him never to know. And that didn’t make sense at all, because ignorance was nobody’s friend. Blaine wasn’t so prejudiced that he didn’t believe there weren’t any good humans, but their ignorance had never done him or his kind any favors.

“They, and many like them, came because the Pope declared us all demons and Europe had become hostile to them. The new world meant a chance at life. Andrew changed his name because the McMorrow’s were well known as clan blood and he was afraid to bring the name with him.”

“I don’t know what that means.” Kurt admitted after a moment’s pause, the gravity of how much history and how much _difference_ still lay between them, pulled heavy at them both.

“Well, of course you don’t. I’ll explain.” Blaine smoothed the wrinkle on Kurt’s brow and mustered an encouraging smile for him. “Lycans used to pack together according to blood ties. Different pack families would get together and form these things called clans, which essentially were bigger packs. The McMorrows were part of Clan Isgar and they were pretty powerful in Ireland once upon a time. If I’m remembering correctly, a McMorrow was one of the medieval kings of Leinster. He was responsible for leading the Norman invasion of 1169 to take back his territory after he was exiled. It was a particularly bloody territory war… and a bad time to be human and caught in the crossfire. Unfortunately that means the name is also remembered in Ireland and associated with lycans.” Blaine shrugged ruefully. “So now we’re American and we’re Andersons.”

“So you’re Blaine Anderson, at least half Irish, clan blood, probably royal, and not Romanian,” Kurt summarized and Blaine grinned at him. “You have yet to confirm or deny if you’re magical, and if you’re using that magic to make me feel like the only place I need to be is right here, doing this, when every bit of reason I have says I should still be screaming at you.”

“Mângâiere is what we call the deep magic. It’s as old as we are and nobody knows why or how it works… it just is.” Blaine tried to explain to him. He could feel Kurt’s body tensing against his and he pulled him closer, rubbing soothing circles against his arms. “The word in Romanian means more than just a single thing… it encompasses the solace that comes with caresses and endearments… it essentially means comfort, but that doesn’t cover everything either.” Blaine let out a puff of frustration as he tried to search for a word that would cover everything and came up blank. Kurt bit back a smile and he gave up. He didn’t know why he’d tried when scholars hadn’t succeeded for hundreds of years.

“Anyway, mângâiere happens naturally… and the bond that’s created essentially means I’ll always be able to comfort you. But it’s not something I can control or use to manipulate you… well I suppose I could, but no more or less than you could either.”

“How?” Kurt asked, clearly a bit disbelieving.

“Well, this isn’t the first time you’ve felt mângâiere, Kurt. You feel it more now because you’re lycan and we’re very bond oriented, but humans form bonds too. They always go both ways don’t they? And you don’t plan them, they just sort of happen.”

“So this…” Kurt worried his bottom lip and Blaine felt him pulling out of his embrace. He resisted the urge to tighten his grip, letting Kurt put whatever distance he felt he needed between them. “I feel this way because I bonded with you… when you were Rex.”

He felt this way because he had loved Rex, yes. But Blaine couldn’t say that, couldn’t remind either of them of what they had lost, so he just nodded instead. Kurt sucked in a breath and sat up. The abrupt shift in his emotions sliced across Blaine like a sharp thing, and he reached for him without thought.

“Kurt?”

“You said you would explain.” Kurt reminded him without preamble and he sat there, looking at the wall and waiting. “Tell me why you pretended to be something you’re not. Tell me how I got this way.”

Blaine swallowed. He didn’t know how to start this story. He wanted to tell Kurt everything, reveal every last piece of who he was from birth up until this point, in the hopes that he’d see it all and decide he was wanted. Blaine needed Kurt to love him, not Rex the dog, but Blaine the man and the thought that he might never was utterly terrifying.

It made him want to stitch his mouth closed and button everything up so that nothing tender could show, and maybe, just maybe then the fall wouldn’t hurt as much.

But that wasn’t the way love worked; it was a risk. So Blaine opened his mouth and began the greatest gamble of his life.

“You know my name is Blaine and you know where my family comes from. What you don’t know is that this house and this land has been in my family for hundreds of years. There’s a long story behind it, which I’ll tell you some day if you ever want to hear it, but for now I’ll just say that it’s very important that an Anderson is always Alpha here.

And that’s what I am. I’m the alpha leader or alpha-major as we call it, of this pack. You’ve got to understand that to be what I am is sacred. Yes I’m king, yes I’m the law, but it’s not without responsibility. I’m the guardian. I have to protect the others and provide for all their needs. I feel each and every one of their lives like they live in my skin, like I have hundreds of hearts beating inside my chest… and when I fail in my duty it’s like a part of me dies.”

Blaine closed his eyes and saw her. Laughing green eyes against dark skin, ebony hair and teasing grin. Her name had been Sally.

“I told you that lycans are very bond oriented? Well my two best friends, Wes and David, we were born in the same litter. We went to school together and when our mothers died my aunt Allie was like a mother to all three of us. They are my brothers in every way and they’ve always been my strength… I’d never have been able to lead the pack without them. I’d be dead without them, and we’d been through so much that I had begun to think we didn’t need anything else. “When Allie would get on me about choosing a mate I’d say ‘why do I need a mate when I have those two, they won’t leave me alone as it is.’ I didn’t actually mind it. I knew that the likelihood of my mating for love was low and I wasn’t in any rush to change things. I loved them both so much for always being there when I needed them… and I thought it would be that way forever.

“But two years ago Sally looked at David and David looked at Sally and suddenly everything had changed. Wes and I teased him at first about how utterly gaga he was over her, because none of us were celibate. We thought he’d be over it after the next moon but he wasn’t. This other alpha, Boyd, was courting her and was a game to us, helping David steal win her affections. But it wasn’t a game to David. It was the real deal. David was taking a mate and for the first time we weren’t a trio. David was David and now David had Sally.

“I was jealous, Kurt, but more honestly I was scared. I knew that if it happened for David it would eventually happen for Wes too, and I didn’t want to be alone. I was cold to her because I hated what I thought she was taking away from me. David was so hurt that after everything, I couldn’t just accept that Sally made him happy. I tried to convince myself that she wasn’t good enough for him, that she still had feelings for Boyd, that David wouldn’t be happy litter-tied, but truthfully I was a selfish coward Kurt.

“You have to understand that nothing that hurts me is separate from the pack. I’m connected to them and they’re connected though me. The pack followed my example and tensions were high. David and I fought and it just made everything worse. Sally could feel how I felt about her, could feel what fighting with me was doing to David, could feel the growing resentment in the rest of the pack. She thought that it was her fault.

“You know we have a saying that if there is sickness in the alpha that there will be sickness in the pack? That wolf, Boyd, that had been courting Sally before David came along, he got sick. He started to hate Sally for rejecting him, for choosing David over him and leaving him lonely. I used to hear him howling at night and I’d wonder if that would be me one day. If I’d lose Wes too and then loneliness would just keep growing and growing until it drove me mad.

“In my heart I wanted her gone, and Boyd… he decided wanted her gone too. He convinced her that I was planning on driving her and David out of the pack and that if she cared about David at all she’d leave with him so that the pack wasn’t shattered by in-fighting. He took her to a foreign forest, a place where he knew men were hunting, and he left her lost. And then he led one right to her. I knew the exact moment that she died… I felt what it was like for David to lose his mate, and I paid for every second of happiness that I had resented him with agony. And you know what hurt the most? Knowing that it was nothing compared to what David felt. He tried to die that day, but he has bonds with all of us and we wouldn’t let him go. Kurt, _I_ couldn’t let him go. Not knowing that all of it was my fault. Not until I made it right for him.

“I went to the council but they said that Sally had entered a hostile zone of her own free will, and that nothing could be done. I couldn’t accept that, couldn’t accept that I couldn’t take any of it back or get any justice for the man who had been closer to me than my own brother. Wes told me to let it go but I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I was guilty and I knew that if I had just been a better friend, a better leader, that none of it would have happened. So I took it upon myself to find both the hunter and Boyd… and when I did I killed them.”

Blaine swallowed the lump in his throat, needing a moment to breathe before he went on. Fearfully he looked at Kurt, hesitant to know what he’d find in his eyes and he winced at how wide they were and how pale his skin had gotten. He knew all too well what Kurt must be thinking. He was sharing the story of his shame not because he felt his crime was justified, but because he did in fact know his actions were to be shamed. It didn’t matter whether the pack blamed him or not, he was the alpha. He knew where the blame lied.

“It felt like justice to the others, but justified or not I’d broken the law,” Blaine explained. “The Guild sent a wizard after me to make sure I was punished for the murder I’d committed. They’ve killed others for doing much less, so you have to understand that all things considered they were merciful with me. Nevertheless they cut me off from my pack, from my wolf, from all other connection and trapped me in the most humiliating form they could possibly think of and exiled me to a foreign city for an entire year. Ian, the wizard they sent to dole out my punishment, took further pity on me and dropped me off where he hoped I’d at least find some form of companionship. The—”

“Tail & Paw Pet Rescue” Kurt finished for him with a sense of finality. “Where you found me.”

“Where you found me actually.” Blaine attempted a smile but it didn’t sit right on his face. “Ian meant well I think, but wizards have a different relationship with humans. It’s easier for them. I hated that place, and I hated the idea of going home with any of those people, people who would love me as a pet and hate me if they knew what I actually was, people who thought of me as a monster.”

There were tears now, angry and hot and Blaine couldn’t say any more. He felt shamed, and couldn’t bring himself to look at Kurt again when he’d given in to such weakness. He was an alpha, and here he was crying like a fool over memories.

He looked down when he felt a hand touch his arm, finding Kurt touching him ever so gently, almost as if didn’t know if he was allowed.

“I did love you as a pet,” the brunette said, gazing at Blaine with an unexpected tenderness. And then he admitted so softly it was almost a whisper, “But the real you terrifies me. One day my life is relatively normal and the next I don’t know who or what I am anymore. I lose control of my life, and my body, and then there’s you. How could I not be terrified of you? Wouldn’t you be?”

Blaine didn’t like it, would never like that Kurt was scared of him, but he nodded anyway because he could understand. He could understand why a human in Kurt’s shoes would be very afraid.

“Is that why you converted me... because you were lonely?” Kurt was still quiet but there was an edge to his question, something sharp buried in his tone that Blaine was sure he would cut himself of if he wasn’t careful.

“No,” Blaine answered with a shake of his head. “The night I was due to change back I ran away because I…” Blaine paused. Here he could say several different things. _I ran away because I thought you’d freak out if you discovered your dog was actually one of those man eating beasts. I ran away because I’d fallen hopelessly in love with you and was afraid of what I would do if I stayed with you a moment longer. I ran away because I loved you too much to take your life away from you, but it didn’t matter because you followed me. I’m so sorry you got hurt but I can’t say I didn’t want this, because the truth is I want you more than I want to breathe._ He could say all of that but he’d promised he wouldn’t put any pressure on Kurt. Whatever he decided to do with his life from this point on had to be about what _he_ wanted and what Blaine wanted didn’t matter.

“Because you have no idea how hard it is to sleep at night, knowing I lost one friend to selfishness. I wasn’t going to lose another. So I ran, but you went looking for me. It was the full moon and there were other lycan’s out. One of them was moon mad and bit you and since you and I had bonded, well it’s complicated, but basically your body was ready for conversion. You don’t remember it because it’s an extremely painful process and your mind blanks it out.”

Kurt didn’t say anything for a long stretch of time. Blaine wondered what if he was thinking about the fact that if he and Blaine had never shared mângâiere he wouldn’t be in this predicament. He wondered if Kurt wished he’d chosen any other dog but him that day at the pet rescue. Just when the silence was enough to make Blaine want to start blurting out apologies, Kurt responded.

“I think I have some idea.” At Blaine’s confused look he smiled a little sadly. “About the not being able to sleep part.” He clarified. “I have an idea. Who was it who stayed with you through all your nightmares?”

“You did.” Warmth flooded through Blaine at the memory. “It’s the reason you started letting me sleep in your bed.”

“It seemed to help, and it meant I didn’t actually have to get up to make sure all that whining wasn’t you bleeding to death on the floor because you’d valiantly defended the house from midnight burglars while I lay dozing.”

Blaine looked at Kurt and Kurt looked at him and neither of them could seem to help it. A moment later they were overcome with laughter. They lay there, grinning at the ceiling like a pair of idiots and for the first time in a while Blaine began to think that things might just turn out okay.


	8. Say You'll Stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. So I just popped my AO3 posting cherry. In celebration of finally getting an A03 account, all the great Klaine news I've heard recently, and an end to the first leg of Kurt's journey, I give you a mini chapter. It's a short bit of a thing, transition for the boys more than anything else, but hopefully it warms you up as much as it did me to write it. After this it's off to the races.

“So what happens next?” The question caught Blaine by surprise. Magical bonds or not, it was post moon and Kurt had been through more than his share of emotional upheaval, so it was no surprise to Blaine that almost in the middle of their conversation Kurt had drifted into an exhausted sleep, right there on the floor cradled in his arms as if that was the safest place for him to be.

The bond had a strong pull on Kurt, due to stress, and part of him was grateful for that, knowing that otherwise they might not even have made it to conversing at all. While he was keenly aware that Kurt wasn’t actively choosing to place so much trust in him, Blaine wasn’t going to quibble about the why of it. Any opportunity to care for Kurt he’d take and he was determined to prove himself worthy of trust.

It had been almost a herculean effort on his part to release Kurt long enough to pick him up and carry him to the bed. He’d managed it eventually and then left to talk to Aunt Allie and make arrangements for the future. There were only certain things he could arrange without Kurt’s consent, and for Blaine anyway Kurt’s consent was crucial, but he could at least set things up so that whatever Kurt decided they could move forward on it almost immediately.

Unfortunately the insistent pull in his gut towards Kurt hadn’t disappeared with finally getting his hands on him, if anything the new proximity had made it intensify. Blaine had only been gone just under an hour before he finally gave in to the insistent urge to return to his room and crawl into bed beside Kurt. The need to be in close proximity to him at all times would make things difficult for Blaine if Kurt insisted on returning to his home in Columbus. Aunt Allie was livid that he was even allowing it as an option.

He’d been thinking it over as he’d slipped back into bed. He’d thought that Kurt was still out to the world, but almost as soon as his head had settled on the pillow Kurt had spoken.

What did happen next?  It was time to decide. Because Allie was right as much as he didn’t want to admit it. Capable of dealing with his urges or not it _was_ irresponsible not to claim Kurt. Not just for his stability but for Kurt’s continued safety. As always, the best solution seemed to be to make his claim. He smiled a bit to himself, imagining Mother Nature shaking her head at him somewhere. Maybe life was a whole lot less complicated than people made it. Maybe they should all just stick to doing what came natural, no questions asked.

 “Do you want total honesty?” He finally asked, coming to a decision, and Kurt turned in the bed to peer at him, brow furrowed with his pensive thoughts. After a long moment of consideration he nodded and Blaine took a deep breath, gearing up for a conversation he knew Kurt wasn’t ready to have. But, here goes nothing.

“You’re not a prisoner here. I want you to believe that. You’ll only need to stay as long as it takes you to be comfortable with the changes, and you’ll have access to phones and anything else you want to get in touch with your family. If you ever need to we can even go see them…” As Kurt’s expression fell Blaine’s speech began to falter. Kurt looked very unhappy about what he’d had to say so far.

“So I’m not a prisoner but I’m expected to just drop my work and my life and shack up here? I’m not a prisoner but I’m not allowed to see anyone and I have to wait for you to chaperone visits with my family?” Kurt spoke each word slowly as if each one needed examining.

“Not _expected_. I’d like it if you did, but I won’t make you.” Blaine could practically hear generations of alphas rolling over in their graves as he forced the words out. “But even if you go home you can’t see your family, at least not right away.” Kurt took to that about as well as Blaine had expected he would, his face clouding with fury and his body tensing up as he geared to retort. Blaine had to figure out some way to derail the coming tirade or they’d never get anywhere.

“Oh like hell! I don’t know who you think—” Kurt sucked in a sharp breath as Blaine leant in and dragged his tongue across the side of his neck. He couldn’t untangle the reason for why he did it, as it was too mixed up in a twisted ball of needs. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he couldn’t really drag his eyes away from that creamy expanse of skin tempting him to suck a mark into. Or maybe it was old habit. Kurt in high temper was both exhilarating and exhausting but Blaine had always known ways to stop him up short and get him to play.

Of course it only dawned on him _after_ he did it that now that they both had human (or at least human like) bodies it might not go over well if he just started licking Kurt whenever he wanted him to shut up for a second or two.

“Did you just lick me?!” Kurt stiffened in his hold and demanded so indignantly, Blaine had to fight back a laugh. He had a little more self-preservation than that so he got his grin under control before he replied.

“Give me five seconds to explain, and then I promise if you still don’t like it you can pull out all your bitch faces and lacerate me with your tongue.”

“Or you’ll lick me to death?” Kurt sneered as he wiped a disgruntled hand over his neck. “What are you, five? I thought that was a dog thing, but it’s just my luck I get stuck with—hey! Hey no, no, no don’t you dare, Blaine. _Blaine_!”

Kurt tried to roll away from him as Blaine lunged at him, but Blaine quickly covered Kurt’s body with his own and got a firm grip on his hips. No amount of twisting or writhing on his part helped Kurt avoid the barrage of licks assaulting him everywhere from shoulder to neck.

“Stop! Oh my god stop! That is…” Kurt’s less than dignified shriek when Blaine licked behind the shell of his ear turned to breathy laughter, and Blaine smiled with a surge of triumph. He could feel Kurt’s laughter pressing against his chest, every shake and rumble from him vibrating against his flesh. He couldn’t help the brilliant grin taking over his face. He wanted to press his ear against Kurt’s belly and listen to the sound of laughter churning there. He wanted the moment to stretch to forever.

“Okay, okay, I’m listening!” Kurt hollered as Blaine’s tongue found its way to tickling the inside of his ear. Blaine released him, lifting his torso so that his weight wasn’t quite smothering Kurt anymore. He smiled triumphantly down at him and Kurt tried to glare disapprovingly up at him, but the expression couldn’t hold up against the grin he couldn’t hold back.  “That is just plain gross. I hope you know that.”

“I do it as a wolf. I did it as a dog. What’s gross about it now?” Blaine asked with a shrug, not wanting to let the moment go just yet. Kurt seemed loath to let it go either, his smile tender as one hand played with the hair at the nape of Blaine’s neck.

“Yeah well, you also licked your genitals as a dog and god only knows what you do as a wolf,” he teased gently and Blaine’s face flushed with embarrassment as Kurt’s grin turned smug.

“They get irritated!” He tried to defend himself as Kurt began to laugh. “They hang out in the open and you’re low to the ground. It’s not like… Kurt, stop!” Blaine didn’t resist Kurt’s arms pulling him down until they were chest to chest again, but that didn’t stop him glaring. He hoped Kurt wouldn’t make a habit of bringing up things he’d done as a dog, especially in front of the others. Wes would never let him have another moment’s dignity.

For a moment they just lay there, their hearts beating close together with only a thin layer of flesh and bone between them.

“So is this a wolf thing? Wanting to lick the blush off your cheeks?” Kurt eventually asked, and an entirely different sort of heat flushed through Blaine’s body.

“Licking _is_ sort of our thing. Affection, respect, healing, there’s really no reason not to lick when you get down to it.” Blaine nuzzled the soft skin of Kurt’s throat, watching the shifting of his flesh as he swallowed thickly. “Licking is good for the spirit, so if you’re feeling the urge…”

“Oh is it?” Kurt lifted a brow again and Blaine wondered if he knew how devastating the little smirk on his lips actually was. “I think you just want me to put my tongue on you, Anderson.”

“It wouldn’t be terrible.”

Kurt’s head pressed back into the pillow as he laughed and Blaine rolled onto his back, content to bask in the pleasure of Kurt’s amusement. He was glad that he could make Kurt forget his troubles, even momentarily, happy to see a glimpse of the man he’d fallen in love with shining out of the gloom. But he’d known even as he’d hoped for it that the moment, beautiful as it was, was too fragile to last. There was too much pressing in on them for either of them to keep the world at bay for long. He watched Kurt’s happy grin slowly dim, darker thoughts creeping into his mind and his eyes chasing shadows on the ceiling.

“I’m flirting with you,” he seemed to decide to himself. Blaine offered no response. He didn’t know if Kurt was actually looking for one.

“I’m flirting with you and that’s absolutely insane,” the man in the bed beside him berated himself as he sat up and buried his hands in his hair. “My entire life is a mess, I barely know you, and a minute ago you were basically telling me I’m a prisoner. And I’m flirting with you!” Kurt laughed shortly, a sound without humor, and for a moment after that he was quiet, tugging on the bed sheets mindlessly as he stared blankly at his hands, his gaze focused inward. When he finally spoke again it was almost with grief.

“I’m flirting with you because you feel like my best friend… because for a year of my life… for a year of my life you were.”

He bit his lip and turned to look at Blaine, his eyes so clear a blue in the light streaming in from the window, they could have been made from glass. His lips lifted in a tiny smile.

“That and you’re unfairly gorgeous.”

Blaine started, the unexpected compliment wresting a rusty chuckle from his chest. There wasn’t a force on earth that was going to keep him from preening a bit when Kurt called him gorgeous, he was an alpha after all, but he ignored the chance to divert the conversation down the more pleasurable path; no matter how sure he was that Kurt would follow if he chose to push them some place sexual, he would feel like he was taking advantage. Kurt wasn’t in a position to defend himself against his own instincts and he had asked Blaine for total honesty. So honesty he would get.

“Kurt,” Blaine reached for his hand and thrilled inside when after a momentary hesitation Kurt reached back. “There’s something you should know.”

“More good news?” The brunette groused, but after a look from Blaine he quieted.

  
“You may not know things about my life as a man, like my favorite foods or what I like to sing in the shower, but you do know _me_.”

It ached somewhere inside, that Kurt looked like he was going to protest, but he pressed on, drawing their entwined hands towards his chest.

“Last year should have been the worst year of my life and the only reason it wasn’t was because, somehow you saw and heard me even though I’d been hidden away and silenced. You offered me solace… I know you did because something in here still remembers.” He lifted Kurt’s palm and pressed it against the paler man’s chest, right above his pounding heart. “You’re flirting with me, Kurt, because the part of you that is wolf knows I’d be…” he swallowed around the lump that had built in his throat as Kurt watched him with increasing worry.

“You’d be what?” He asked fearfully, as if he expected Blaine to say the worst. Blaine suspected that what he was about to say was in fact on Kurt’s list of ‘worst that could happen’.

“Your instincts are telling you I’d be a good mate for you.”

“Mate?” Kurt’s eyes had gone wide at the word, something hard entering his tone as he slowly withdrew his hand from Blaine’s. He knew without having to ask that Kurt wasn’t quite ready to hear what he’d had to say, but time wasn’t something they had in abundance. He had to know because sooner than either of them would really have liked, Kurt was going to have to decide what he wanted.

“Yes. We’re at the age where most lycans take mates.” Blaine tried to explain to him. “Your body is sort of on alert for it and you’re receptive to the signals of potential matches. Even now you’re sending out signals left and right that you aren’t even aware you’re sending.” Kurt’s face was twisting with frustration, the fear he was desperately trying to hide bright in his eyes. But this wasn’t something Kurt could hide from, no matter how inconvenient it was going to be to his life.

“I know it’s a lot to take in at once, but that’s why converts are placed with an alpha-master and trained. If you want control of yourself, Kurt, it’s going to take a bit of coaching. Separating you from humans is just to keep everyone safe and to help you focus.”

Kurt tore his hand out of his and Blaine winced at how much the motion seemed to cause him physical pain. He was much too close to Kurt’s emotions. That was going to be trouble.

“So that’s the big excuse? I need to be locked up because I’m sending off signals that I’m horny?” Kurt scoffed. “Look, I don’t need—”

“Unless it’s your goal to end up fucked by some stranger and mated to him, I’d say yes, you do!” Blaine snapped, grappling unconsciously for Kurt’s hand and growling when the beta recoiled, his jaw setting in a stubborn line as he bared his teeth and glared at the alpha. Blaine didn’t need to see how threatened Kurt felt by his outburst to regret it, he’d regretted the words almost as soon as he’d said them. He swore under his breath, kicking himself for letting his primitive needs get the better of him. But the image of Kurt unconsciously flagging down some lusty alpha and being claimed was wreaking havoc on his nerves. A growl rumbled in his chest.

Kurt stiffened further at the sound. Had he been in his wolf skin, Blaine knew the beta’s hair would have been standing straight up on end. There was no way that Kurt, even this green, couldn’t recognize that sound for what it was: possession. The beta’s eyes bored into his, his gaze direct as he plumbed their depths for answers that Blaine couldn’t hide from him even if he’d wanted to.

“A stranger like you, you mean.” Kurt declared it, rather than asked, and shame flared hot in Blaine’s gut. This was exactly what he’d been hoping to avoid. He forced himself to swallow back the jealousy and the anger, battling for equilibrium as he raised himself onto his knees so that he and Kurt were eye to eye. It pained him to see how wary Kurt was now, when only moments before he had almost seemed happy. He leaned away from Blaine, he never dropped his gaze. It remained challenging despite the fear Blaine saw there, and in that moment he admired Kurt all the more for its presence. It put him to shame, learning how much courage this one man seemed to possess.

He had to make him understand, make Kurt believe, that he would never do anything to break his spirit. It wasn’t his soft skin, or his broad arms that made Kurt so unbearably beautiful to him.

“I want you, yes,” Kurt’s eyes went impossibly wide at the admission. “But it’s because I know you too. I know just how brave you are and I know what makes you cry when no one’s there to see you. I never want to be the reason you cry. You were my only friend when I needed friends the most. Yet you think I’d take advantage of you when I know you’re not up to fending me off…  You’re right, maybe we still have a lot to learn about each other.”

“Blaine…” Kurt’s gaze had softened, something like surprise replacing the suspicion in his eyes.

“No, please don’t Kurt. I get it.”

“I’m not trying to hurt you!” Kurt insisted and a little spark danced up Blaine’s spine when Kurt reached for his hand. “I just… everything has changed, and I know what I should be feeling and thinking rationally, but it’s like… it’s like suddenly there are two people living inside me and they want very different things… I don’t recognize myself half the time, and I’m doing things I can’t explain, and it’s terrifying. I just want control of my life again.”

“I know,” Blaine assured him, squeezing the hand that held his. “Kurt I understand. That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you. You’re lycan now but in your head you’re still very human. There _is_ something inside you. You _are_ a different person.” Blaine laid his hand over Kurt’s chest again and pressed for emphasis. “You’re wolf inside now and I can’t even begin to explain that in human terms. But you can feel it. Can’t you? It’s living, it’s wild, and it’s both a part and separate from you. There are many wonderful, but dangerous, aspects to it that you’ve got to learn to control. Otherwise you’re a danger to yourself and everyone around you.”

“I could hurt someone.” The words were spoken with such abruptness that Blaine was taken back. Kurt had gone stiff, his voice almost painfully hoarse as the gravity of what Blaine was saying began to sink in. “Like I did last night. I… I’ve been trying not to think about it. But I remember. I remember.”

“Kurt.” Blaine reached for him with his other hand as a shivering shudder went down the other man’s spine and he flinched away from his embrace.

 “I was out of control. I couldn’t stop. I wanted to. I wanted to stop Blaine, and she was screaming and I—” Blaine didn’t hesitate this time, grabbing him by both shoulders and pulling Kurt to him, letting his head drop to his shoulder as tears began to fall with violent shudders.

 “I t-tore her up. There was so much blood!”

“Kurt, pl—”

 “I don’t want it! I don’t want this thing in me. I don’t want it I don’t want it I don’t want it I don’t wa—”

“You didn’t kill her Kurt!” Blaine shouted over Kurt’s screaming, trying desperately to reach him through his hysteria. He could only blame himself for the pain Kurt was in. There were so many things he could have done to prevent this. He should have protected him better, and he hadn’t. So this was his fault. And god, why hadn’t it occurred to him to mention the vampire girl was alright sooner? All this time Kurt had been thinking he’d murdered that girl, and Blaine knew Kurt well enough to know how much that had to have been eating away at him. It should have been the first thing out of his mouth that morning.

“What?” Kurt gaped with a heavy sniff, attempting to keep his choking sobs at bay. Blaine rubbed the tears from his cheeks with his thumbs and pressed their brows together.

“She was alive when Wes and the others found her last night. She was bad off…”

“Oh my god.”

“But she was alive, Kurt. She’s still living, as far as I know.”

“Oh… my god. Oh my god!” Kurt chanted in disbelief, dizzying relief washing through his frame until he was limp with it. He was crying harder now, as if the news had broken a dam somewhere inside.

“Baby, listen to me.” Blaine whispered against Kurt’s ear, rubbing soothing circles against his cheeks as he spoke. “It’s not your fault. Tina is your best friend, and your wolf sensed the danger of the vampires she was with. No one could expect you to have any control over your instinct to protect her. You didn’t even know you were lycan. It’s my fault if it’s anyone’s. I never should have left you alone all month.”

“Why did you leave?” Kurt demanded past his tears. “Do you have any idea what that was like? I kept losing more and more of myself and I couldn’t make it stop. I thought I was going crazy.”

“I wanted to give you time.” Even though it was true, even though he knew he’d been thinking of Kurt, Blaine winced at how silly that sounded now. Kurt had never had time and he should have realized that and acted accordingly. All Blaine had done was make things worse.  But he wanted Kurt to know he hadn’t intended to hurt him, wanted him to understand the why of it, even if it had been wrong.

“You’ll never be human again and even if you decide to go home and live like one, it will always be different from now on. I didn’t want you to wake up in a strange house with a stranger and learn you’d lost everything in a single night.”

“As opposed to doing it thirty days later when I’m convinced I’ve gone insane and the wolf has almost literally come bursting out of me?” Kurt demanded, and if Blaine hadn’t known it before he knew it now. He’d been so incredibly stupid about all of this.

“I didn’t…” he could only hang his head with a contrite grimace, nothing of worth to say for himself. “I’m sorry. I owe you so much more than a lame apology, but I honestly just didn’t know. We’ve never had a convert before. I had no idea when or how fast you’d develop. I thought you’d still be pretty human up until the full moon. I was going to take you to dinner beforehand and explain everything and it was supposed to be as gentle a transition as I could make it for you…”

‘So much for that’, neither of them actually said it but the words hung between them. There wasn’t any taking it back, or any magic words to be said to make him feel better now, so Blaine just held him, grateful that at least Kurt seemed to welcome the small offer of comfort.  Gradually his shaking quieted and after a time Blaine felt the squeeze of Kurt’s hand in his. When he returned the pressure Kurt’s lips quirked into a small but rueful smile. He wiped away the tracks of his tears with his free arm as he collected himself, breathing deeply.

“So, tell me. If I want to go home what happens then?” He finally asked and it was hard not for Blaine to immediately growl.

“Well as far as being lycan goes, you were born in Columbus so you do have a right to a place in their pack, should you want one.” Blaine had to look toward the window as he said the words. He didn’t know what it said about him but every little bit of him that was possessive alpha was kicking him for providing Kurt with an out. “I’d bring you to their alpha-major and he’d assign you a master. You’d be kept away from humans until you had a better control on your wolf side and fully understood what it means to be lycan. When you were ready… well then you’d be free to live however you wanted. Not all lycans live alike. Some are more domesticated than others.”

“Not all lycans live in the middle of the forest and hunt for their food you mean?” Kurt asked, his smile turning a bit wry, and Blaine’s mouth turned up in a half grin.

“No. In big cities like Columbus most lycans live like humans. They have jobs and families and cars and would rather not think of themselves as wolves for most of the month. Things get a bit harrier on the full moon but otherwise you’d have a hard time picking them out from anyone else.” It hurt Blaine to say it, but Kurt needed honesty, so quietly he added, “You’d be able to continue theater, eventually be close to your loved ones, and have a life that somewhat resembled your old one. You might be happier if you went to Columbus.” He let Kurt consider that, biting his tongue as a sick feeling roiled in his belly.

“And if I stay… what does that look like?” Kurt was regarding him strangely, his serious gaze searching, and Blaine’s stomach cramped with anxiety. What was it that Kurt was looking for? What could he possibly say to convince Kurt to stay when it was obvious what would make Kurt the most comfortable. Had he been Kurt the choice would have been obvious.

“If you stay,” he began, searching for the right words even as they tumbled out of his mouth. “If you stay you’d submit to my authority and then you’d be part of this pack. Westerville would be your home and I’d be your alpha-master, if you wanted me too. When my duties conflicted with teaching you, my Second Wes would substitute. I’d show you how the pack lives and what it means to be lycan and to be a part of our community. You would eventually find another job, because even though we have a community fund you’re you and you’d never be happy if you weren’t making your own way.” Kurt smiled at those words and Blaine’s half smile bloomed just a bit brighter with pride, but then it was dimming again as he considered the conflicts Kurt might face.

“You should know that humans aren’t well liked, also that by now everyone knows that you’re here and because of their connection to me they’re aware that I... care for you. They will expect you and I to mate, and they’ll be reacting to you accordingly. I’ll be courting you, because I’m not an angel and I won’t pretend like I don’t want you. I want you to choose me, but that requires a responsible knowledge of what choosing to be my mate will mean for you.” Blaine watched Kurt pale as he listened, his body tensing up again as Blaine’s words settled between them. Blaine gave his hand a bolstering squeeze and pressed on.

“But I want you to understand that if you stay I’ll respect any boundaries you give me and you’ll be free to mate whoever you want… or take no mate at all if that’s what it came down to. You can also leave after your training. A lot of young people leave home when they’ve passed their trials. You could see the world… find a new pack, or go it alone, whatever you wanted to do. “

“You’d let me leave, just like that?” Kurt asked quietly, clearly unwilling to believe it could be that simple. “You wouldn’t be angry with me?”

“You’re a person, Kurt not a commodity, so while I hope you’ll decide one day that you’re madly in love with me…” Blaine let go of the tension in his own body, letting the smile creep over his face to full brightness for the first time, welcoming Kurt to tease him. Like he’d hoped, Kurt began to relax, until he was softly grinning right along with him.

“You aren’t going to go all ‘Beast’ on me and lock me in your castle forever until Stockholm sets in?”

Blaine laughed.

“No. I won’t do that. But you can’t blame the guy for trying. I do sort of want to put you in my pocket and keep you to myself. I don’t want to lose you, Kurt.”

Kurt reached up and brushed a loose curl off of Blaine’s brow, the tenderness of the gesture throbbing between them like an ache.

“I honestly don’t think it would be hard to fall in love with you,” he admitted with a hint of longing, it stretched between them like a taught string, and neither of them could miss the want in the others eyes, but there was gravity to his tone when Kurt’s gaze found Blaine’s and he confessed, “But I don’t know if I’m cut out to be your mate. I don’t even know if I want this life.”

Blaine wanted to assure him that he was strong, that he was brave and resilient and capable of anything he set his heart to, because he was a Hummel and no one pushed the Hummel’s around. Blaine had seen Kurt overcome so much, and he knew that if he decided that the pack was home and Blaine was what he wanted, that nothing would truly be able to stop him. But those words, true as they were, were swelling up from a selfish place. They might have been true, but they weren’t what Kurt needed.

Blaine raised Kurt’s palm to his lips and turned it over, pressing his lips to the soft center and leaving a chaste kiss.

“I know,” was all he said on the matter. “I have to go back to work, but think about it. Whatever you decide, Kurt, that’s what we’ll do.”

Blaine forced himself to leave, promising to be back in a couple of hours and to send someone by to check on him. He did not see Kurt watch him until the door had closed behind him, did not know that he stared at it long after his departure.

He didn’t see it when Kurt groaned and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

“Don’t go there, Kurt.” He muttered to himself. “This is way above you. Don’t make it worse by falling in love with him.”


	9. A Not So Welcome.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt comes to a decision. Why does he regret it already?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some readers on tumblr expressed confusion over Jeff's character. Yes Jeff 'Nordstrom' is canonically (as a Warbler can get) Jeff Sterling. The last name I used for him in this fic carries over from when I was writing solace and I hadn't yet seen the Warblers Yearbook. As it's not something I'm attached to and to avoid confusion, he will here on out be referred to by his canon(ish) name, Jeff Sterling and at a later date I will change that within the text. Lol got that? Now, I hope you have happy reading.

Blaine had promised to be back, but Kurt wasn’t sure what Blaine expected him to do in the meantime. Probably sleep if the dull aching in his muscles was anything to go by. Kurt managed to catch a couple hours more of sleep but eventually his restless mind woke him, and he met the world feeling groggier than before. His body was still exhausted and sore but his mind wouldn’t quiet. The pressing decision of ‘what to do now’ weighed heavy, growing heavier still with every attempt to work through it.

If he stayed it would mean being far from home, but it wasn’t like he’d be able to go home even if he went back to Columbus. He’d be at the mercy of strangers. He might not really know Blaine but at least he was familiar. He trusted Blaine, though he wasn’t sure that was him talking and not the bond.

What he did know for sure was that he should call his work before the day was out. He had told Steven he would meet with that dramaturge today and... he didn’t have his phone, Kurt realized with a sudden alarm. It had been in his pocket at the club and he’d left his clothing lying shredded in the street the night before. He had to call Tina! Another realization hit him like a truck. Mike had done something to her last night, something dangerous that the wolf in him had been able to sense even if he couldn’t see it, and he had no idea what had happened to her after that.

Kurt sat up with purpose, reaching for the phone by the bedside, glad that for the moment he had a singular task to focus on, and it was at that precise moment that someone rapped smartly on the bedroom door. A second or two later there was a woman in white scrubs hovering in the doorway, her blond hair tied in a neat pony, and a plastic ID hanging from a lanyard around her neck. It told him her name was Dr. Quinn Fabray and for some reason the utterly absurd sight of a human doctor in Blaine’s straight from ‘Victorian Living’ bedroom was the most comforting thing he’d seen in a month.

“Hello, I hope I’m not waking you up?” She asked with an apologetic glance at the bed and Kurt had the thought that she had a lovely speaking voice. Steven would kill to have someone like her audition with the company, maybe then they’d have a Cossette for the run of Les Mis that he was always gunning for.

“It’s alright. I was awake,” he assured her, setting aside thoughts of work, and the blond woman nodded.

“I’m Dr. Fabray, though everybody around here just calls me Quinn the medicine woman.” She waited for a moment and when Kurt just blinked at her she rolled her eyes and waved the joke away. “It was some TV show, and somebody thought they were really clever. They weren’t, but the name stuck.”

Kurt just kept staring at her, having nothing to say to that, and Quinn cleared her throat gently and shifted, turning behind her to look at a small girl who had become visible with her movements. He saw right away the resemblance between the two. Though the girl couldn’t have been older than seven or eight years old, she already looked so much like Quinn it was startling.

The girl was hanging back, almost hiding behind Quinn but when she saw Kurt staring at her she took a deep swallow of air and stepped tentatively toward him.

“Are you better now?” She asked and Kurt blinked again in confusion, looking to Quinn for answers. The woman smiled at him almost dryly, but instead of offering up any information turned to the girl and said, “I told you he wasn’t dying.”

Kurt tilted his head in curiosity, wondering what she meant by that, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed questioningly at his strange visitors, flushing in embarrassment when he actually thought about what he was doing a moment later. Even still his mind catalogued both their scents, feeding him a wealth of data that he didn’t quite know how to organize. Honey and toast from the little girl, vaguely familiar, perfumed hand lotion and antiseptic from Quinn. There had been sweat in there too, his nose was too strong to be fooled by deodorant, the salt and brine of Quinn’s humanity almost screaming across his senses, and the startlingly comforting smell of earth and wolf coming from the girl.

Kurt choked a bit on surprise and blurted out quite without thinking, “you’re a lycan?”

The girl nodded shyly, seemingly pleased that he had noticed and offered with a smile, “my name’s Beth. I’m really glad you’re okay.”

His head was beginning to hurt, trying to make sense of all this. Thankfully Quinn came to his rescue before Kurt became anymore confused.

“Beth snuck in to see you earlier when you were upset. She thought you were hurt,” glancing at Beth again Quinn added with a much sterner tone, “though she shouldn’t have been there in the first place, she did good going to get Blaine.”

His cheeks flushed with embarrassment, recalling finally that whiff of honey and toast he’d caught earlier in the bathroom and putting two and two together. He cringed, knowing that anyone, let alone a small child, had seen him like that. There was a small spark of resentment in there too, thinking he might have escaped if Beth hadn’t gone to get Blaine, but it wasn’t like he was being tortured now and he could admit that he was better off here than wandering by himself without a clue. It wasn’t the kids fault anyway, and he could only imagine how frightening the sight of him losing it had been.

As if reading his mind, Quinn laid a hand on Beth’s head and stroked her bangs back, explaining gently that cubs had a harder time blocking out strong emotions.

 “I’m alright now,” he promised and Beth nodded, though she eyed him suspiciously as if he might collapse into tears again at any moment.

“You’ve seen him, god didn’t decide to strike him dead for poking your nose where it didn’t belong, and Blaine won’t throw you into exile.” Quinn knelt to say, in a tone that reminded Kurt a lot of his stepmother. “Now you’ll wait outside while I talk to Mr. Hummel, before I walk you back to school where you promise you’ll stay?”

“Okay… but Miss Allie says I’m house bound for an entire week.” Beth looked wary, fully aware that she was in the dog house but hopeful that her pitiful expression might sway her mother to empathy. Quinn frowned at her and the little girl’s hopes died.

“You know I can’t interfere with the school, Beth, and you know how dangerous it is for you to go off on your own.”

Kurt watched Beth nod with a crestfallen pout and walk out, not before giving him a sad little wave, shutting the door behind her. Quinn stayed kneeling, regarding the space her daughter had occupied a moment ago, only looing up when Kurt quietly asked, “Is she a convert… like me?”

It would be nice to know someone who had been through what he was going through now, even a child, but Quinn shook her head.

“Beth is lycan, born and bred.”

“But you’re…”

“Human?” Quinn asked, rising to her feet with a knowing glance. “Yes, I am.”

“How is that possible?” He struggled to get his mind around it. “It’s just that she smells no different than the rest of them… I’m no biology expert but shouldn’t there be something human left over?”

“Maybe there is,” Quinn answered with a slight nod. “Most human-lycan bred are born omega, but it’s neither here nor there if that’s a result of mixed genetics or a coincidence. Most mothers finding out they’ve been impregnated by ‘the other side’ either terminate the pregnancy or abandon the child shortly after birth. The survival rate of children like Beth is practically nonexistent so the data is pretty skewed.”

“And there are no other differences?” Kurt asked skeptically, thinking back on years of young adult fiction full of people with cat ears and tails. Quinn grinned again, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking.

“No, Mr. Hummel, your nose is correct. Beth is as lycan as you are, which is as lycan as anybody under this roof, excluding me of course. Lycan blood is still a mystery, full of properties we don’t yet understand, and for lack of a better description, once it enters the bloodstream it mutates almost everything it encounters.”

“Like a disease?” He asked with growing horror and Quinn shrugged.

“There are many pushing that idea. The truth is no one is sure. Research is limited, it’s not legal to experiment on them without consent in this country, and few offer themselves up as text subjects.” Quinn paced to the window and looked out it, a thoughtful expression on her face as she stared through the glass. “What is sure however is that if you mingle enough of their DNA with ours, ours will mutate to match theirs. So I guess, on a grander scale, you could say that you and Beth have been through a similar ordeal, only her conversion happened in the womb.”

Kurt swallowed the lump in his throat and let go of the hope he’d been holding deep inside, just beneath the surface, not fully realized but there just the same, and now gone.

“So there’s really no going back?”

“No, I’m afraid not.” Quinn turned from the window to level her gaze at him, the unrelenting sobriety of it more convincing than her actual words. He wondered how often she had contemplated her daughter’s condition, if she would change it if she could.

Lucky Beth, he thought, lucky that at least she had never known what it was like to be anything else but what she was. There was a confidence in that at least.

“My daughter is lucky,” Quinn seemed to read his mind again. “As difficult as it will be for he to find her place in it, Alpha Anderson has opened up his pack to her. She has as a chance at making a life for herself one day that is comfortable and happy… I know this is a difficult time for you, Mr. Hummel, but if I could offer you some advice?”

Kurt wasn’t sure what to think about any of the decisions he had to make but he realized that he actually wanted to hear what Quinn had to say. Maybe it was because she was human like him, like he had been, and the fact that he wasn’t quite ready to think of his humanity in the past tense was telling enough… he needed to know what this perfectly normal looking human woman would do in his shoes. He needed to hear just one voice that wasn’t alien to him, telling him it was okay to want to stay.

He nodded and Quinn smiled sadly at him.

“It took me having Beth to realize that there was a lot about this world that I didn’t understand,” she gestured to the room around them and he knew she meant more than Blaine’s room, she was talking about Blaine’s life, the lycan world. “It’s not always pretty. Frankly it can be unbearable at times. You’ll need all the friends you can get, people you can trust.”

Kurt didn’t reply. He hadn’t anything to say and Quinn did not seem to expect one. He trusted Blaine, but he wasn’t sure if that was sane, and he certainly didn’t trust any of the others. His mind flashed back to that morning, stumbling upon the boy fighting in the arena. That had looked bloody and painful and he had no idea who that teenager had been and why he was being hurt like that.

But Quinn, who was comfortingly human and ordinary enough, she trusted Blaine with her daughter’s life and that more than anything helped calm some of his fears.

She was right. He was lycan now, and if there was no way back he’d have to move forward. He’d have to learn how to cope with this new life. Better here with Blaine, than with strangers in Columbus.

****

It took longer than he’d predicted to make the phone calls he needed. Work was first, and it went about as well as could be expected. He was thankful at least that with Quinn willing to take care of the necessary documentation he could at least go on proper medical leave. He knew that wouldn’t keep the company from replacing him in the long run but he was hopeful that he’d established a good enough rapport that getting his job back when he was ready wouldn’t be too difficult.

Kurt had been with Rhetoric since he was an intern back in undergrad. His boss Steven was worried about him and absolutely gobsmacked to learn he’d been bitten by an actual werewolf. It was that morbid curiosity he’d heard in Steven’s voice that caused Kurt the most worry. Was this how it was going to be from now on, people learning he was lycan and treating him like some exotic zoo animal? Wouldn’t fear of him naturally follow? He would fear what he had become if he were Steven.

After Steven he tried calling Tina, but she answered neither home nor cell number so he left a quick message giving her as much detail as he could supply and then rallied his nerves to make his last call. When he dialed he hadn’t yet decided what to say or how to explain to his family disappearing into an undisclosed location and being unable to contact them for the unforeseeable future. When Carol cheerfully handed the phone off to his father and he heard the familiar warmth and gruffness of his father’s voice, all thought fled his mind and his tongue tied in knots.

It was like being fifteen again, fifteen and terrified of who he was and losing his connection to the most important person in his life. He knew with the part of him that was not a scared little boy in desperate need of a father’s love, that his father’s love went deeper than what he chose to wear or who he chose to sleep with, and that even this, even becoming something not quite human and possibly monstrous, would not stop that love. But it changed things. It changed things in ways that Kurt couldn’t have a hope of predicting. He suddenly saw again what Burt’s face might have looked like if he had shown up the night before, a feral animal covered in blood, and he choked on the confession he just couldn’t bring himself to make. He fumbled his way through a wild, and undoubtedly confusing, lie and tried to sound halfway convincing while he was at it.

“Slow down, kid you’re going where?” Burt cut into his long winded ramble, and Kurt swallowed thickly.

“Away… a vacation of sorts, I just need time to figure this all out.” There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line and Kurt waited tensely, knowing how crazy this all must sound, and begging a god he didn’t believe in for mercy in no questions asked.

“Where are you going?” Burt finally asked, not ‘what is it you have to figure out’, because between giving up on his dreams of New York, losing a fiancé, his dad’s second heart attack, and losing the damn dog even, Burt knew as well as anyone, better even, how much weight Kurt had been carrying around with him. But it was still a difficult question to answer and Kurt bit his lip.

“Not far, I’m not leaving the country I mean… But I don’t want anyone to know. I just need time to myself… not to think about anything for a while. I just wanted to call before I left, so you didn’t worry.”

“So you’ve quit your job, and you’re going god knows where for you don’t know how long, you don’t want to tell anyone how to reach you, and I’m not supposed to worry?”

Well put like that.

“Kurt, are you in some kind of trouble?”

More trouble than his father could even imagine. The urge to tell the truth swelled up again, the confession perched on the tip of his tongue but caged by his teeth as he clenched them. Admitting he liked to sleep with other men was not quite like admitting that he’d become the thing that lurked in the shadows of horror films. At least before there had been a chance his father would still see him as human.

“I don’t know who I am anymore.” It was strange, but no sooner had the words slipped off his tongue, did he know them to be absolutely true. Maybe that was the true confession. Once said, the rest came easier. “I haven’t for a long time, not since high school I think. All my plans…” he laughed as he thought of them now, thought about how quickly life could change and how unexpected it could be. “Well they haven’t worked out. I’m tired dad, just really tired of getting by. I want more than that.”

He waited. He knew he couldn’t provide his father with any satisfying information, or explain fully why he felt the need to essentially disappear without contact. He couldn’t even explain to himself why any parent should accept that. But he hoped anyway that Burt would understand, couldn’t bear the thought of him worried and searching for him. Kurt waited anxiously for him to speak.

“You’re worth more than that, Kurt,” Burt finally answered and Kurt couldn’t help his jaw dropping in surprise. “I know you put on a good face about going to school in Ohio after my heart attack, and I know you don’t like to talk about Eric but don’t think I don’t know how much those setbacks got to you. You’re too big for Ohio, Kid, I’ve always known that. You used to know it too, and I won’t pretend like I get it or I won’t worry, but if doing this, whatever it is, helps you remember that, then I think you ought to go. You were always meant to do something great Kurt. I know you’ll find whatever it is.”

Kurt’s throat was thick with tears when he replied, “I love you dad.” No matter what happened he always would.

“I love you too kiddo,” Burt sounded close to tears himself. “I always will. Take care of yourself.”

He promised that he would, and then Kurt hung up, the click sounding as final as the thud of a closing door. He sucked in a shuddering breath and slowly expelled it, feeling as if he would shatter at the first loud sound. A throat cleared and he looked up to find Blaine there, returned from his errands and watching him with sympathetic eyes.

“Burt?” He asked, and just like that the tears in Kurt’s eyes were brimming again. Seeing them, Blaine added gently, “it won’t be forever Kurt. I’d never let anything keep you away forever.”

It struck Kurt then that Blaine knew exactly how saying goodbye to his father would make him feel. It went beyond a basic knowledge. Blaine had been there to listen to all his memories, to lean on when he’d gotten the call about his dad’s second heart attack, to lay on his lap and just let Kurt cry on him until he couldn’t cry any more. His knowledge was intimate and for once Kurt was glad of that fact.

He nodded, biting his lip to stave off the tears and clenched his fists in the comforter. Silently Blaine sat on the bed behind him, reaching to slide his arms around Kurt’s middle and pull him back into the warmth of his chest, his chin coming to rest on Kurt’s shoulder.

Kurt let him, taking immeasurable comfort from their combined warmth and the tickle of Blaine’s curls on his cheek.

***

He decided to stay. He was Blaine’s protégé now (something Blaine had explained was rather close to a Jedi apprentice and Kurt still wasn’t over how enthusiastic he’d been about the reference). He’d also, despite an escape attempt, largely spent most of the day in bed so when Blaine suggested they join the others in the dining room he agreed. He didn’t feel ready to meet other lycans, but it was better to just bite the bullet and get this whole thing over with.

He dressed in some of Blaine’s clothes again, promising himself a new wardrobe at the soonest possibility. Then he had a brief moment of panic when he realized that he had none of his money, not even so much as a check book on him, and no identification in order to get money. All of that had been in his wallet. He was virtually stranded in a strange house in Westerville, in the middle of a werewolf conservation zone, at the mercy of a pack of them, without phone or money, and nobody knew where he was!

Blaine, seeming to sense his rising panic, had reached out a hand to steady him and instructed him to breathe.

“We’ll get your things, Kurt. I can have your friend Tina bring them even…”

Kurt expelled a breath in furious relief, the thought of seeing Tina again almost too wonderful to bear.

“I thought humans weren’t allowed to come here?”

“Not unless invited,” Blaine explained and at the sight of elation brightening in Kurt’s eyes he was quick to add, “and humans only get invited this close if they’re ly-kindred.”

“Oh,” Blaine saw the hope of seeing his family sooner diminish in Kurt’s eyes and felt a pang of sympathy for him. His next question wasn’t unexpected. “Tina isn’t ly-kindred. How can she…?”

Blaine paused for a moment, thinking carefully before he spoke again.

“The vampire you hurt—”

“Nearly killed you mean?”

“—she is coven and there are certain rules covens and packs have agreed to follow, and one of them is not to hurt each other without just cause.”

Kurt thought that over, swallowing thickly as he put the pieces of the puzzle together.

“I broke the rules,” he guessed, not really needing Blaine’s confirming nod.

“Not intentionally and given the circumstances her coven won’t have any choice but to excuse you, but there will be a conclave and a trial just the same, and Tina is not only a key witness but also thrall to—”

An indignant surge of anger on his friend’s behalf had Kurt’s hand clenching into a fist. He resisted the urge to hit something and snapped instead, “Tina is not some mindless thrall!” Everyone who had ever seen a vampire movie knew what thralls were, simpering dolls that got a thrill out of the danger involved with letting blood suckers bite them and play with their bodies. Usually it ended with the heroine shocked to learn that allowing a vampire to take over her mind and body ended horribly for everyone involved.

Blaine raised his hands slowly, and explained gently, almost like he would to a child, that despite the negative associations surrounding the name, Tina was in fact by definition, a thrall.

“She has been claimed by a vampire, Kurt. That’s what thralls are. That’s what they’ll call her in Mike’s coven, regardless of how much free will he chooses to give her. According to vampire law, she belongs to Mike, so she can come with him if I invite him here to discuss the accusations against you. Isn’t that at least a good thing?”

While he was still happy that his stay here might not be completely cut off from his best friend, Kurt was livid at the idea that Mike and his coven saw her as little better than a plaything. He’d seen that for himself at the club, the effortless way Mike had stolen Tina’s mind from her and forced his will on her. It was frankly monstrous.

“Vampire law is the biggest pile of bullshit I’ve ever heard,” he bit out through clenched teeth. “People aren’t pets!”

Though Blaine nodded somberly in agreement Kurt thought he saw the corner of his mouth twitch.

“I agree. It’s probably why our wolves seem to naturally fear them. We hate captivity in any form.”

Unbidden Kurt flashed back to just a month before, when Blaine had been captive, and for all intents and purposes, Kurt his warden. For the first time he wondered if Blaine had really been telling him the truth when he said he’d enjoyed their time together. Because the more he thought on Tina and what it would mean to be some vampire’s thrall, the more he seemed to poke at that wild thing inside, until it wanted to pace out of his skin.

How could Blaine have been stuck in the body of a dog for twelve months and not drive himself mad?

“On second thought, not every form,” Blaine startled him out of his spinning thoughts with a soft bump to his shoulder. “Love is a form of captivity after all.”

Kurt knew that the melting in his stomach was probably ‘magical bond’ induced, or maybe just Blaine and that particular smile were enough to make it feel as if the wolf inside had decided to rub up against his rib cage and warm his bones, but whatever it was he let himself smile.

“Are you ready for this?” Blaine asked, as he finished dressing and Kurt shrugged, his smile diming slightly.

“Not really,” he admitted, but at Blaine’s worried frown he returned the nudge to his shoulder and smiled bravely for him. “But probably as much as I’ll ever be. Lead on Master Kenobi.” It was probably not good for that whole ‘not complicating his life by falling in love with Blaine’ thing, that the sound of Blaine’s laugh felt like a reward.

He was a bit intimidated by the size of the house (it was an honest to god mansion) as Blaine led him to the dining room, explaining along the way that the entire estate (including the school) had been built by an eccentric wizard in the early 1800’s (before Ohio was even a state). According to Blaine, the Wizard had built it so that only he and later Andrew Anderson (formally McMorrow) as well as his decedents, could ever call the land home. It sounded like something out of a fairytale to Kurt, but the only people who could inhabit the land within the wizard’s safeguards were the wizard himself and Andersons.

“Obviously others can stay here at my invitation and no one is going to drop dead for accidentally wandering into the territory,” Blaine assured him. “But bad things happen to people who come here and over stay their welcome.”

Apparently it wasn’t a good idea to piss off the master of the land or the land might just swallow you up. If that wasn’t an intimidating thought, he didn’t know what was.

If the house was intimidating, walking into the richly appointed dining hall and meeting the eyes of nearly a dozen strangers who all seemed to stop what they were doing to stare at him was downright nerve wracking.

There was a long table lined with ornate chairs in the middle of the room, a large set of draped windows on either side of giant glass doors (leading out to what appeared to be a garden) along the far wall and a massive fireplace taking up most of the opposite. There were several comfortable chairs and a coffee table set up in front of the fire place, and there were people everywhere, a sudden change from the one or two service people he’d spotted on their walk there.

The staff (or what he’d assumed to be staff) was all dressed in blue uniforms with red piping. These people were dressed almost too casually (shorts and t-shirts to match him and Blaine for the most part) the most absurd detail of them all the fact that none of them were wearing shoes.

“I told them to dress up for you,” Blaine whispered in his ear and Kurt gaped at him, not sure if he wanted to know what dressing down meant to these people if track shorts, t-shirts, and no shoes was considered formal attire. Blaine seemed to take some delight from his incredulous expression. “It’s not uncommon for some of the guard to show up shirtless… even naked at times.”

Kurt eyed the beautiful vintage chairs around the table with horror as he imagined a dozen or so naked men and women sitting in them bare assed. Next to him Blaine started to chuckle.

“We try to keep some semblance of humanity about ourselves, for preservations sake, but clothing is generally a nuisance, and makes it harder to shift comfortably. Obviously we can ignore the discomfort if we have to, but here we don’t, so we don’t always bother with it.” With a waggle of his eyebrows Blaine added, “So don’t be too shocked if tomorrow you come down for a nudist’s breakfast.”

Kurt glared at him, just to get the point across that itchy collar or not, sitting down to eat with a bunch of naked strangers was so not going to happen any time soon, and followed him over to the table.

The chatter around them was still largely subdued, everyone watching them with unveiled interest, the conversations dying as Blaine moved to the head of the table. Kurt hung back just slightly, unsure of what he was supposed to do or where he was supposed to sit, all too aware of the numerous eyes burning into him with curiosity. Never one to hide from his battles (at least the ones that did not concern his father) Kurt followed Blaine’s direction to take the seat on his left and surveyed the others in the room.

They were a strange mix. There was of course the staff (two women, a man, and a nervous looking teenager carrying trays laden heavily with food) an older woman (a bit plump in the cheeks with greying hair and a kind smile sent his way when she caught his eye) and an older man who regarded him with cold disinterest that was somewhat off-putting. Most of them were men around his age, as well as three women. He was glad to see Quinn amongst their number. She too flashed him a smile when they locked eyes and he returned it gratefully. The rest of the people taking their seats were younger, teenagers, and Kurt realized with a lurch in his gut that one of them was the boy he’d seen being attacked in the arena earlier that day. He looked none the worse for wear now, minus a few bandages on his hands. He like all the others was watching Kurt wordlessly.

Blaine cleared his throat, a quiet sound that rolled through the room like thunder and brought the last of the whispering to an end. Kurt wasn’t sure how he knew but he recognized that there had been power behind Blaine’s voice just then, and he could almost see it ripple across the room as all eyes turned to him.

“Before we eat, I’d like to take a moment to introduce our guest… since we’re all talking about him anyway.” There was some quiet laughter following that and Blaine paused for it, reaching for and squeezing Kurt’s knee under the table. “Everyone, this is Kurt Hummel. Kurt, here on my right is Wes, he’s my Second and pack Beta-Major.”

Kurt couldn’t be sure what that terminology meant, but he’d picked up a bit on pack hierarchy from Blaine’s stories already. If alphas were the top dogs (excuse the pun) and the Alpha-Major was at the top of the pile, then it stood to reason that his Second would be someone who could match him without challenging his sense of authority, a beta. ‘A you’ his unhelpful brain supplied. Though he immediately shot the notion down, he couldn’t ignore the unspoken conversation being had around him.

He was supposed to be a beta, Blaine had already warned him that the whole pack was aware that he would like to mate with him. They probably didn’t think Wes could remain Beta-Major if Blaine took him as a mate. It was obvious to anyone with eyes (and Kurt certainly had them) that they all had opinions about that. It didn’t look favorable.

Interestingly the Wes in question only smiled (a bit dryly) at him as he was introduced, no hint of the resentment Kurt expected him to be feeling in sight as he greeted him, “welcome, Kurt”.

Next Blaine introduced Wes’s protégé, none other than the boy from the arena, a Jeff Sterling who narrowed his eyes at Kurt before Wes elbowed him in the ribs.

“Welcome,” Jeff mumbled into a spoonful of soup, tossing him a hateful glare as if his master’s ire was Kurt’s fault. One by one Blaine introduced them all and Kurt was anxious to note that most of their greetings were as lackluster as Jeff’s had been. It stung he had to admit, though he didn’t know why the rejection of absolute strangers should matter to him at all. It wasn’t as if he had asked to be there, and he’d be gone as soon as he was declared fit to live on his own. He kept his chin high and returned each frosty look with a glacial stare of his own. If they thought he’d be easily cowed they were wrong. He worked in theater; he could out freeze even the bitchiest of divas.

“Kurt has come here to apprentice and I’ve agreed to take him on as my protégé,” Blaine explained after introductions were over. “You’ve probably already figured out by his age that he’s a convert. You’ll treat him no differently than you would if I’d chosen him from the students of Dalton. Are we clear on that?”

There was a lot of nodding and some murmured ‘yes alphas’ but Kurt got the feeling that wasn’t the end of it. Several pairs of eyes remained cool as they watched him. One pair, belonging to a broad shouldered brown haired man several seats down from him (Flint something or another) actually sneered at him.

“Are you sure that’s fair, Blaine?” Flint asked, and the condescension dripping from his tone was enough to alert a blind man that Flint Wilson didn’t want Kurt anywhere near his alpha (let alone his pack). “How’s a human supposed to survive here?”

“Well I don’t plan on eating him, Wilson,” Blaine replied with an easy smile, for all the world unbothered by Flint’s obvious dislike of the situation. “Hopefully none of you plan to either.” There was laughter, and with the ease of tension at the table everyone began to dig into their plates and resume quiet conversation amongst themselves.

 “I wouldn’t bet on that,” Kurt muttered to Blaine under his breath as he cut into some of the meat on his plate, venison it looked like, and Blaine’s answering chuckle didn’t lighten his irritation at all. “Why do you find it funny that your pack would happily chew me up if you’d let them?”

“Because I’d never let them, and they know that,” Blaine replied before taking a sip from the cup the waitress (he had no idea what to call the woman pouring water into his cup, and would never dream of calling her a servant) had just poured for him. “More importantly,” Blaine added with a playful smack of his lips, “you wouldn’t.”

Well, Blaine certainly seemed confident in his abilities to hold his own. Kurt wasn’t as sure but the vote of confidence still sent a fissure of warmth through his belly and he couldn’t help but grin as he took a bite of his food. He was so busy making moony eyes at Blaine that he almost didn’t notice he was eating raw meat.

Okay it wasn’t quite raw, the outside was more grey than pink, but the burst of heady flavor on his tongue made him wonder how the cook (cooks?) had gotten the meat so juicy and tender and then he looked down and the steak was still so red inside it was practically still in the throes of a death scream.

He dropped his cutlery with a clatter and once again all eyes turned to him and conversation died.

“Kurt?” Blaine questioned with concern, eyeing the green tint to Kurt’s pallor warily. It was a battle not to heave as he stared horrified at the slab of steak on his plate, leaking much too red juices into his vegetables. He tore his eyes away from it, in order not to lose that battle, and saw immediately that that fellow Flint was smirking at him with something like disgust.

“You not like deer, Kurt?” He asked with faux concern. “And here Blaine had us go out hunting just for you. We caught some rabbit if that’s more to your taste. We could even rip up the tough bits for you until your canines come in.”

He knew on some level that he was being mocked, that he was being baited, but the images that flooded his mind were so grisly he lost the battle not to heave, and jumped out of his chair. He rushed from the room, knowing it was too late not to be sick entirely but desperate not to do it in front of any of them, one hand clamped around his belly and the other over his mouth.

He heard Blaine call his name, heard his footsteps rapidly follow him, felt the warmth of his hand as Kurt leaned over the puddle of sick he’d just made in his hallway and shuddered with humiliation.

“I’m so sorry,” Blaine fretfully rubbed his back as Kurt wiped his mouth and fought to stop shuddering. “I should have warned you about the meat. Now that you’ve let your wolf out you won’t like it overly cooked.”

“Overly cooked?!” He demanded indignantly. “It was bleeding Blaine! That was the most disgusting… how can… fuck, I need water.” Kurt babbled nonsensically, grateful when a glass appeared in front of him, not so grateful to find that Blaine’s friend David had followed them into the hall. He gulped like a man who’d been wandering through desert for weeks. When he could talk again without tasting blood in his mouth he whispered hoarsely, “I’m not going to eat raw meat. I don’t care what anyone thinks, it’s barbaric.”

“Then you are going to be very unhappy with your dinner from now on,” Blaine warned him. David remained silent. “Kurt, you’re a wolf. I know this is different, but just think about that for a second. Does it really sound that unbelievable to you that your body would crave this?”

No. He’d tasted his meal before he’d really looked at it, and had been shocked by how good it was. That was the entire reason he’d looked in the first place. But having the taste buds of a lycan and thinking like one were two different things and every last shred of him that still felt human absolutely rebelled at the thought of consuming raw meat.

“Blaine, I can’t I just can’t…”

“You won’t.” Kurt looked to the tall, dark, man standing beside Blaine, shocked into silence at hearing him speak for the first time. David wasn’t even looking at him, his gaze pointed down the hall and seemingly captured by something there; even his words didn’t seem truly directed at him.

“You’re human.” Blaine opened his mouth, maybe to protest, maybe to agree but he fell silent as David finally turned and looked at Kurt, his black eyes almost fathomless as they seemed to suck greedily the warmth out of the room. “They were curious what your limit would be. Now they know.”

Without so much as another word David turned and strolled back into the dining room the door swinging softly shut behind him. Kurt didn’t say anything and neither did Blaine. There was nothing to be said. Kurt would either accept this part of his new nature or he wouldn’t.

He felt Blaine’s hand on his back again, heard him softly murmur to come back inside when he was ready and then Blaine too, left him, left him to decide for himself.

He couldn’t, it wasn’t fair to make it seem like some sort of weakness that he couldn’t… and yet that’s the way they’d all see it. It would mean something to the rest of them if he rejected this most basic part of being lycan, if he couldn’t handle so much as eating his dinner without deferring to his lost humanity.

It meant a lot of things, but most profoundly it just confirmed what he was trying to tell himself every minute of his day. He’d never belong here.

 


	10. Headmaster Strand.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt gets an education on pack hierarchy and Harvey Strand gets and education on Kurt Hummel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter largely focuses on Kurt's continued introduction to the guard, but it does also continue to explore Jeff's relationship with Nick. Nick is not exactly the healthiest boyfriend around and he's not meant to be. See the warnings for dub/con. If it ever becomes non/con between him and Jeff you'll be warned with big flashing lights. Also, I've decided to go there. When I began plotting out this story I decided which glee characters where going where and how OC's were going to be used. It was planned that Kurt would have at least one person besides Blaine in the pack looking out for him, so for those of you wondering if this is going to be a long uphill battle for Kurt alone you can breathe easy. 
> 
> Yes it will be uphill and long, but he's going to make friends! :) And originally one of those friends was an OC, but given that season 4 has provided us with a glee character who would do everything Victor would have done in the plot and BETTER at that, this fic now includes one Adam Crawford. 
> 
> Here are the rules regarding Adam. Play nice. No bashing. If you have a problem with his use in this fic please message me privately. And no, I can't promise he won't make things messy with Kurt and Blaine because that would be lying. Blaine is a bonded alpha whose bond-mate has not bonded back with him and Kurt is a catch. Of course this was going to be messy.

 

Nick had always liked gardens, so this wasn’t a bad one to wait in. It was dangerous being this close to the Anderson house. Sebastian talked a good game, pretending not to be afraid of the wizard’s magic that guarded the place, but then again his whole plan for take over gave him away. He was as wary of the forces that protected Anderson and his pack as any of the others. For all that he could be a raging asshole at times Nick liked Sebastian. He was a good leader where it counted. After all, you’d think he planned this.

The thing about the Anderson house was you couldn’t stay long on the grounds if your intentions were to harm. It was a bit more complicated than that, and there were plenty of loopholes that a canny wolf could get around, but as far as protections went it was a good one. It made it nearly impossible for any outsider to invade, and the spells being tied to Anderson blood made killing the alpha to take the territory a useless endeavor. That is, if the stories were true. Sebastian had tested the rumors that morning when he’d attempted to sneak all the way up to the house.

When he’d been caught and forced first to bow, and then wait, then to accompany Blaine back to the border of town he’d seen and felt enough to confirm that there was truth to them. If Blaine didn’t want them on Anderson land they wouldn’t be allowed on Anderson land. It was unclear why he hadn’t set the land against them yet.

Nick and the others were far from deterred however. The plan had never been to wage a war. Not yet anyway. Only a fool repeated the same mistakes others had made time and time again before them. Open attack didn’t work, Anderson had too many defenses, but not so long ago there had been another alpha here and it was only by his murder the pack had been taken. So there were obvious flaws in the magic’s design; there always were.

One of them had to do with that emotion none of them believed in anymore, the one that had been burned out of them.

Love, for all that it is otherwise useless, is still an invitation.

_*_*_

He would have to walk back into the dining room because there wasn’t anything else to do. Whether he went back in or not he was stuck here, he still had to learn how to deal with his wolf instincts and though Blaine seemed to think the lycans in Columbus were more human-like than not, there was no guarantee that they’d like him any better there. And in Columbus he wouldn’t even have Blaine to lean on for support. Besides, the idea of hiding out in Blaine’s room and then fleeing to Columbus made something under Kurt’s skin itch. All of the wolves on Blaine’s guard had decided he wasn’t worth their time at first glance and Kurt didn’t need their approval, but he was familiar with the feeling of being judged unfairly and he’d left it behind him in high school.

A low growl rumbled in his chest and he flexed his hands against his knees. He looked down when he noticed a sharp stinging sensation. He watched in stupefied wonder as unbidden his nails lengthened, thickening to form wicked claws, the pain in his hands increasing in volume as shock bled into horror. He fell back against the wall, the thin fabric of his borrowed pants snagging and tearing a neat row of holes as he yanked his hands up to stare at them.  Kurt’s body began to shake as he willed the disturbing sight away, biting his lip against the feel of fire rushing through his limbs, frantically trying to remember anything Blaine had told him about shifting. Spontaneous shifts were a thing that happened, shifting could be controlled, it hurt the worst when you fought it…

 “ _Are you alright?_ ” The sudden sound of Blaine’s voice in his head took him by surprise and he reeled away from it, toppling over as his eyes flew open to blearily focus on the ceiling above his head. That _was_ Blaine right? His head felt like it was being squeezed for juice, it was hard to think.

 _“Yes it’s me,”_ Blaine assured him almost over his wild thoughts. “ _Can you do something for me? Concentrate on the sound of my voice.”_

Kurt tried but an unrelenting pressure was building in his bones. He whimpered, a plea for help he could only hope transferred across whatever mental plane of communication they were using.

_“Just focus on the sound of my voice, okay? You can handle this Kurt. I know they think you can’t because you were human, but that just shows what they know…”_

Demon hands made of fire were twisting his skeleton, hot breath scorching his skin…but he had to ignore them; Kurt struggled to lock the pain away, to ignore the jerking and jilting of his body and hear only the sound of Blaine’s voice.

_“… and I thought for sure you’d get scared off like the others, but you didn’t. I challenged you and you knew it was a dare, but you wouldn’t back down. I think I knew I was in trouble even then.”_

Blaine’s soft laughter rolled gently between their minds and Kurt was taken back to a damp room with dirty walls, angry not green and not brown eyes boring into him from behind the bars of a cage, not begging for rescue, instead daring him to take on the task of jailer, calling him low and demanding he prove it by turning away.

He’d told himself he was reading far too much into an irritated dog. Kurt thought he heard himself laugh at that. He lost himself in Blaine’s voice, letting it submerge him in memory.

_“You told me that with my attitude no one would want to help me. You told Phil you wanted me even though I’d bitten people and I could have hurt you….”_

A furious body slammed against steel bars. Finn claimed the beast was more wolf than dog.

_“You told me you were my last chance, to check the attitude and come home with you. You said if I promised not to bite anyone else you’d give me a new name.”_

He smiled, remembering a sunny afternoon in his brother’s car, the tentative reach of his fingers as he touched the dog who was so much more than that for the first time.

_“I think you hated the name Blackie more than I did. You knew you couldn’t make me a pet, but it never stopped you trying to be my friend.”_

His dog was strange. His eyes were too human, filled with too much pain not to have an understanding of the world they both lived in. Kurt didn’t need a pet, had never wanted a pet in the first place, but he wanted to help the animal heal. Not because it was right even, but because it was something good and he was tired of everything feeling wrong.

_“You hated T-Rex but said Rex was fitting because it meant king. You gave me the name of a walking tragedy. Only you eventually dropped the Oedipus and simply called me Rex….”_

The dog wouldn’t let anyone touch him, wouldn’t sleep, and barely ate. When he did sleep he was haunted by things that set him to howl and wake the neighbors. Finn said he was a hopeless case. Tina said he’d probably been abused. Kurt said whatever the case, Rex was his.

_“You held me at night and told me that I could leave tragedy behind me, you told me how you survived hell when you were young and that we were together now, so whatever new hells the future wrought I wasn’t alone.”_

Rex loved the park. He liked stalking the water fowl by the pond, liked wrestling with Rocky and terrorizing the smaller dogs who tried to join their play. He liked laying on Kurt’s feet, his lap, his chest, his bed, curling against his side on the sofa as they watched TV. He never had to be trained. Kurt had a leash for him but knew Rex could always find the way home and would return at a call. He warned Rex that he’d beg for the wrath of god by the time Kurt was through with him if he ruined any of his furniture and Rex never decided to test him on the issue.

_“And if you hadn’t given me a thousand reasons to love you over the course of that year that would have been enough. I’m not just talking out of my ass when I say you are one of the kindest and bravest people I’ve ever met. Give them time and they’ll see it too.”_

There was a warm glow in his chest at odds with the cold sweat pebbling his brow but Kurt’s smile was sincere and soft when he thought, ‘ _I wish we could go back._ ’

He didn’t see Blaine’s answering smile but he felt it in his chest, soft and sad, and it was only as he dropped his head to take a deep breath that Kurt realized the pain and the shaking had stopped.

-*-*-

Not leaving the dining hall when he felt Kurt begin a spontaneous shift was nearly impossible, but Wes’s firm grip on his knee beneath the table and quiet warning in his mind held him in place. Whatever his instinct, Wes was right. Kurt would have it harder than any protégé had ever had it before, the others would make sure of that, and Blaine knew his eyes and influence couldn’t be everywhere at once to protect him. He had to earn his place here in the pack and Blaine wouldn’t be doing the other man any favors by appearing to coddle him; especially if they wanted to avoid a mutiny when (if) they decided to mate. Even still, he made sure to catch Flint’s eye and make certain he felt the weight of his alpha’s disapproval.

When the doors opened and Kurt limped back inside quiet fell over the room once more. His body showed the wear of an interrupted shift, but he kept his head raised high as he made his way back to his seat, only the faintest of tremors betraying his body’s exhaustion. He lowered himself back into his seat with the grace of someone born to royalty and with his nose in the air like that (and that haughty gaze of his blasting their company at the table with disdain) he looked the part.

One of the omegas on staff rushed to exchange his abandoned plate of steak with something more along the lines of what Quinn ate when she was in residence, but to all of their surprise Kurt halted the server with a shake of his head and took up his knife and fork with a white knuckled grip. Blaine would have laughed at the avid way they all watched, the ridiculous picture of a room full of people raptly watching a man consider a plate, if he weren’t as snared as they were, waiting with baited breath to see what Kurt was going to do.

Kurt cut a slice of meat, his knuckles bloodless with the tightness of his grip, his discomfort wafting off him like radio waves for every last one of them to read. Blaine would make teaching him how to contain his stronger thoughts and emotions his first priority but he was oddly pleased that for the moment Kurt couldn’t hide. He couldn’t hide the twisting of his stomach or the mental war raging in his mind as he brought the cut of steak to his lips with his trembling hand and bit it off the fork. He chewed with eyes squeezed shut, guts squirming, and chased the morsel down with a long swallow of water from his cup.

He shivered as if the water had chilled him on the way down and the room seemed to catch a collective breath as they all waited to see if he’d be sick again. A moment passed, and then another, and then Kurt opened both eyes with a slow blink and lowered his cup softly to the table. He looked green around the gills but his voice was calm (if somewhat hoarse) as he turned to Blaine and said, “I don’t want to waste, and I know I’ll be sick if I try to eat it all tonight. I’ll try to eat more tomorrow.”

Blaine had to struggle not to grin like an idiot, feeling such fierce pride for Kurt in that moment it almost filled him up and shot out his toes.

-*-*-

Dinner was a quiet affair after that, everyone at the table content to almost whisper to their neighbor. Kurt didn’t know for sure but he doubted that was usually the case, but he was thankful anyway that he wasn’t forced to talk to anyone besides Blaine and Wes, who was surprisingly diligent in drawing Kurt into discussion, as if the three of them were perfectly at ease and had sat down to a meal like this one a hundred times before.

When Blaine assured him the mess he’d made in the hall would be taken care of and Kurt asked about his staff it was Wes who explained that all those in service at the house were omegas. He hadn’t studied much about wolves (lycan or otherwise) so although he had vague references, all he knew about pack dynamics he’d had to pick out from Blaine’s stories.

“I know that alphas are in charge… but is that because they’re dominant or are they dominant because they’re alphas?” He asked and Wes and Blaine shared an amused shrug.

“They’re not strictly interchangeable,” Blaine explained. “One is a gender identity; the other is more of a social one.”

“Packs are about community, Kurt, and every community needs order,” Wes chipped in. “Pack hierarchy places the strongest in leadership roles, while those who are weaker provide for the pack through service.”

Kurt wasn’t sure what he thought about that. It didn’t sound too different from the way human society worked when he thought about it long enough, not everyone was suited for every job, but it troubled him that anything human was considered ‘weak’ among lycans. His eyes found Quinn down the table, chatting to the older woman who had smiled kindly at him when Blaine had introduced her, and thought about Beth. Was that what life would mean for her? If she didn’t meet someone’s expectations would she be forced into service, never to make anything more of herself even if she wanted to?

“So is their some sort of test you have to take…” he asked, trying to make sense of it. “Did you have to fight someone or something to be called an alpha?”

“Not exactly…” Blaine hedged and Kurt narrowed his eyes at him, wondering what could be so bad that Blaine would hold it back from him.

“Blaine was born an alpha Mr. Hummel,” a stern voice cracked above the gentle murmur of conversation and Kurt raised his eyes to stare at the older man with greying hair who had addressed him. Harvey Strand, he remembered from Blaine’s introduction, and he was headmaster at the school. Headmaster Strand had all of the imposing disapproval he imagined a headmaster should have, and seemed able to command the room to attention with nothing but the straightness of his spine.

Kurt widened his eyes as he felt a tingling pressure begin at the back of his skull growing heavier as Strand opened his mouth and began to speak again.

“A cub is either born with the proper ability or they aren’t. They either have the aggression of a warrior or they don’t, and they can either be taught the skills of the hunt or they can’t. The signs are evident almost from the womb and a proper wolf displays either their dominant or submissive characteristics almost as soon.” Strand’s words seemed to settle like rocks in his head, making it feel heavy, and it was one of the oddest sensations in the world to feel something in his chest quiver, to suddenly want to roll over and bare his neck for no reason that he could make sense of. Beside him he felt Blaine stiffen, but Kurt’s eyes were glued to Harvey Strand who held his gaze almost as surely as if he had plucked it out of the air and curled a fist around it.

This was a dominant display, he decided for himself. Strand was showing him what an alpha was capable of, what they did to establish their authority over other wolves. It suddenly became grossly obvious that for all his fears about Blaine, it was not Blaine he had to worry about. Not if all alphas had this power.

Other than to attempt to keep him from harm Blaine hadn’t yet tried to dominate him. Kurt’s heart began to pound as he truly began to understand the extent to which he could, which any of them could. Not every alpha would be so courteous; and if the hungry look on Flint’s face meant anything, not even every alpha at this table.

“An alpha only knows what it is to demand; an Omega only knows how to please.”  Strand’s smile was gentle, at odds with the forceful way he wielded his dominance. He wouldn’t look away and the urge to sink out of his chair and roll onto the floor was becoming so strong Kurt was dizzy with it…

“That’s enough Harvey. You made your point.” Blaine’s snap was hardly loud in the quiet room but it returned that comforting bloom of warmth in his belly that he was beginning to associate with the sound of his voice and Kurt sat to attention in his seat, not even having realized he’d slid into a slouch.

That thing inside came to attention too, that wild thing, that wolf, and his face was flushed with humiliation from having been played with so easily; so that when a growl rumbled in his chest he did nothing to hold it back. Strand seemed surprised by the sound. Maybe he’d expected Kurt to cower behind Blaine or faint or something stupid like that. Kurt wasn’t sorry to disappoint him.

His tongue burned with threats but he wasn’t so stupid as to challenge a lycan when he had no idea what consequence it would bring, but he wasn’t going to be pushed around either. He was familiar with bullies and while he had hoped his whole life wouldn’t amount to fighting one after another, he’d do it if that was what it came down to.

“Only giving our guest a lesson on dominant and submissive nature,” Strand murmured with a submissive nod to Blaine. “I am an educator after all.”

He could feel Blaine gearing to reply before he so much as drew a breath, and Kurt gripped his shoulder in an unspoken request for silence and Blaine slowly closed his mouth, asking him with his eyes if he was sure. Kurt nodded and the corners of Blaine’s mouth tilted upwards before he nodded for him to go ahead.

He had no idea what he was doing. Commanding an audience wasn’t a supernatural ability, and forcing some whiny diva to do her job wasn’t quite like making people roll over with his will alone, but it was as familiar to him as breathing and he could only use the tools he had.

“Then you won’t mind if I go over it one more time?” Kurt asked Headmaster Strand with faux innocence. Not waiting for a reply he recounted for the room, “Alphas are the biggest braggarts because they happen to have the biggest voices, and they lord it over the omegas, and anyone else who doesn’t go around thumping their chest and screaming about how important they are. They go along with it because presumably they're too afraid not to.”

There was a choked off laugh from one of the omegas, the young male, but he silenced at Strand’s furious glare. The room was so silent after that Kurt could hear the leaves rustling outside.

“But I’m not afraid, Mr. Strand” Kurt warned him in the same tone he’d warn an actress to get in her costume and like it. “I’m a beta which, if we’re going by your little hierarchy lesson, means I have the good sense to like what I like and still know how to tell a pushy alpha where to get off.” Though Harvey Strand was glaring contempt at him Kurt smiled pleasantly at him, all too pleased with shutting the arrogant man down.

“Did I get all of that right?” He asked with extra sugar and he only realized as it was happening that the warm jiggling sensation in gut was the feeling of mirth, Blaine’s amusement tickling at his senses. The bond they shared was too confusing to comprehend most moments, bit this one he didn’t mind it so much.

It was a low chuckle that broke the silence. A blond man, Kurt struggled to remember his name and came up dry, at the other end of the table began to laugh and clap, unbothered by the glare Strand sent his way. Kurt peeked around and saw to his amazement that the blond wasn’t the only one who appeared to approve of his display.

“Something funny, Crawford?” The man named Flint snapped, and the man Kurt now remembered as Adam Crawford only laughed harder.

“Yes! I want everyone who bet against me to pay up,” the blond grinned. “I told you convert didn’t equal omega.”

Wes and Blaine seemed to find it funny how many groans went around the table and how many pockets were emptied as money was passed down to the grinning blond. Kurt was considerably less impressed, but then again at least one person had thought he’d turn out to be something other than a doormat. That had to count for something.

 _“Not just one person. Wes and I didn’t want to offend you by betting.”_ Blaine’s thoughts slipped into his head and Kurt gave him a judging glance, just in case he got it into his head that he was cute or something.

-*-*-

After the last plate had been scraped clean Blaine called for recess, where Kurt learned it was customary for the Alpha to talk to his second in private, in preparation for the huddle that would follow. Wes explained that it was a daily briefing (had after morning and evening meal) as everywhere around them chairs scraped and people stood to wander to the far end of the room, to mingle around the fireplace.

“You’ll be on your own for a bit,” Blaine sounded apologetic as he nodded towards the group of them collected by the fire. “Will you be okay?”

“Well your headmaster might be out to get me now,” at Blaine’s worried frown Kurt drummed up a confident smile that didn’t quite match how he actually felt. But he had thrown the gauntlet so he’d have to meet the challenge. He couldn’t exactly hide over here with Blaine, now could he? “I’ll be fine,” he assured, though he wasn’t actually sure at all.

“More than fine I should say,” a friendly voice chirped as a blond teenager popped up so suddenly at his left elbow that Kurt let out a startled cry.

He had the kind of boyish face that made him look permanently twelve, though he was probably somewhere closer to sixteen. Something about the way he smelled was brimming with youth and vitality and he was practically bouncing on his heels as he grinned at Kurt. Before either of the men in front of him could speak the teenager had thrust his face against Kurt’s and set to rubbing, looking obscenely dreamy about the gesture when he finally released Kurt from the chokehold his arms had made around his neck. Before Kurt could demand what the hell he thought he’d been doing, rubbing his face all over Kurt’s face like some overgrown puppy, he began to talk at an alarming speed.

“Chandler Kiehl, a fellow protégé, and on behalf of every beta in the room I just want to say that I think you’ve got major balls taking on Headmaster Strand. Everyone at school is terrified of him. The Omega who cleans the bathrooms? They say he was an alpha when he was a protégé, only Headmaster Strand made him piddle himself in front of the whole school and that’s why he’s an omega now and hides out in that shack on campus...” Chandler went on and Kurt, who had no idea so many words could be said in so short a time (and so enthusiastically) could only gape at him soundlessly.

“Chandler,” Blaine sighed the boy’s name like a man with practice. “Rowen was born an omega and lives in the groundkeepers cabin so he can be on hand without having to deal with every idiot cub at Dalton who believes a ridiculous story.”

“So it’s not true?” Chandler pouted for a moment as if Blaine had just announced there wasn’t going to be any Christmas this year, but like a sunbeam bursting through cloud cover he grinned again and yanked Kurt to his feet, tugging him towards where the others were gathered with the momentum of a runaway train. “Well whatever, it was still really badass. You’ve got to sit with me during the huddle, Rory will be so jealous.”

As they left Blaine and Wes at the table and approached the lycan’s gathered around the fireplace Kurt gulped. In contrast to the start of the evening most of the gazes following him were just politely curious (if not quite as adoring as Chandler’s) but some were outright hostile, particularly those of Headmaster Strand and the four lycans he was currently standing with in the corner.

Chandler bypassed them and led him instead to where a collection of lycans were sitting (or laying sprawled) directly in front of the aging woman with kind smile. Kurt was relieved to note Quinn sitting on the arm of her chair.

“Ah, so you found him,” the woman greeted them warmly, rising to her feet and gently clasping Kurt’s instinctively stiffening shoulders. “Welcome, Kurt.”

With considerable tenderness she slowly pressed her check against his, giving him ample time to pull away, and rubbed their faces together affectionately. Though he stared at her like a deer caught in headlights when she pulled away, the feeling it left him with was interestingly warm. She chuckled at his expression and gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“I see Chandler didn’t bother explaining before he mauled you,” she said with a droll look at the teenager who shrugged as he plopped down on the floor next to a brown haired boy. “Human’s shake hands, this is what we do… but only typically when greeting a friend or packmate.”

 Kurt nodded numbly, not sure if the pleasant feeling the whole face rub thing induced was worth getting numerous stranger’s oils all over his skin. He might just stick to handshakes. That or up his skin care routine.

“I’m Allie if you don’t remember from earlier, Den Mother of Dalton school,” the woman reintroduced herself and Kurt smiled gratefully at her. He would have liked her simply for the kindness she’d shown him from the get go, but something about the way she smelled made him think of comfort and safety and he found himself gravitating to her.

“You remember Quinn of course,” as Allie gestured to her Quinn flicked her fingers in a wave and Kurt nodded. “Sprawled out like the queen of Sheba is Alpha-Master Noelle Harris,” a dark skinned woman with enviously long dark hair waved from her spot on the floor. “Sitting beside her is her protégé Sugar Motta.” A brunette with almost as much energy as Chandler leaped up, possibly to rub his face, but thankfully Noelle gripped the back of her collar and staid her with a murmur before she could attempt it.

“Next to Noelle is Alpha-Master Luke Wright, and beside him is his protégé Rory Flanagan…”

Kurt nodded at each of them as they were introduced, pausing for a shocked moment to stare at Luke. The tall black man had a riot of dark hair on his head, sticking out at all ends, and the entire left side of his face from eyebrow to lip was marred by thick fleshy scars. Realizing his stare was quickly becoming rude Kurt jerked his eyes away as Allie went on to introduce Alpha-Master John Mitchel and his protégé Trent Nixon, then Wes’s protégé Jeffery Sterling, and lastly the blond whose bet Kurt had unwittingly won for him was introduced as Alpha-Master Adam Crawford. Chandler was proud to announce that Adam was his Alpha-Master, loudly too, as if he wanted to inform not just Kurt but the entire room.

Kurt blinked in surprise when Adam offered his hand in the human way, greeting him with a warm hello that was so unexpectedly _normal_ he could have cried.

“Hello. I’m Kurt,” he stated the obvious, fighting the urge to blush beneath Adam’s smile. “You’re from Westerville? You don’t sound….”

“Native?” Adam filled in and Chandler practically hopped in his seat on the floor.

“Adam was born in Pack London,” the teenager filled in. “He came here for school when he was a cub and decided to apprentice, which everyone knows means you’re going to be pack. Annnnd” Chandler drew the word out for suspense and Kurt saw the girl Sugar roll her eyes as she nudged the other teenager in the ribs.

“Before we’re all dead lover boy.”

“And he fought with Wes and Blaine during the uprising and was one of the first to take his majority trial with Blaine as the new alpha!” Chandler finished with a flourish and Kurt raised an eyebrow at the blond man who was peering up at him through honeyed eyelashes.

“You sound like quite the hero,” he teased, though he was really interested to meet someone who had been there when Blaine had taken the pack from his father. He hadn’t even been lycan that long and he was beginning to understand how bloody a battle that must have been. And Blaine had told him he’d been a teenager at the time, a student like these protégés.  He wondered how he’d done it and if Blaine would ever tell him. He could understand not wanting to relive it, but maybe Adam would be willing to tell him if Blaine was reluctant.

“Not really,” Adam denied with a shake of his head. Gesturing in general to include the other alpha-masters he said, “Everyone in this room fought in the uprising.” At Kurt’s obvious surprise he nodded.

“This is the youngest inner guard Westerville has ever had because we were all willing to do what had to be done when the time called for it. Blaine’s a good man, he was more forgiving to those who were loyal to his father than many said he should have been. A lot of them still remain in the outer guard but he chose to promote men and women he could trust to his inner circle.”

Turning back to her chair Allie nudged Adam out of the way as she added, “Which explains how a bunch of overgrown cubs got the run of the place.” She gestured for Kurt to have a seat and he complied, sitting between Adam and Noelle. He was a bit intimidated to learn that while he’d been dreaming of Broadway and moving to New York these men and women had been fighting for their lives. For the first time he could remember he felt privileged about his own childhood. It hadn’t been easy but hard as it had been he couldn’t compare it to the type of life these people had lived, or the battle that would leave the kind of scars marring Luke’s face. 

It left him with questions, so many questions. He wasn’t going to stay in Westerville, that had already been decided, but Blaine was right. It was good to get to know the pack, learn how different lycans lived. Even though he planned on returning home when he could and living as humanly as possible he couldn’t avoid lycans forever. There was still the full moon which would certainly bring him into contact with many of them. He should know as much about them as he possibly could.

“So this isn’t the whole guard?” He ventured to ask and next to him Noelle laughed.

“Oh god no, twenty hardly makes a real fighting force.  As Adam said, this is just the inner guard, the commanding alphas. There are eighty others in the outer guard. We’re about a hundred strong.”

Kurt pictured that, pictured over a hundred wolves running about the small town of Westerville on the full moon and couldn’t quite fathom it.

“And the government is fine with that?” He asked and the others laughed.

“We don’t hunt en masse, Kurt” Noelle assured him with a playful bump of the shoulder. “We break into smaller parties. Every party is assigned a party alpha, one of us, and Blaine trusts us to carry out his orders and see that our parties are in place and doing their part.”

So each of them probably had five or so wolves under their command, Kurt’s mind calculated, and Blaine being Alpha of course had to position the whole lot of them like chess pieces. More and more he didn’t envy Blaine his position as leader.

“And the guard… you’re like the pack army?” He asked his next question and this time the tall alpha wolf with the dopey smile that reminded him a lot of Finn was the one to answer.

“Army, police, the whole nine yards,” John Mitchell confirmed with a smug grin. “Though we’ve definitely been focusing on the army part lately.”

“Army?” He asked, his heart dropping into his stomach for a moment. “You think someone will try to take the pack from Blaine?”

No one answered right away and Kurt watched as they all looked between each other as if silently discussing what he should be told.

They seemed to come to some sort of agreement because finally Allie spoke.

“It’s likely. Blaine was gone for quite a while and a leaderless pack often draws the attention of territory hungry rogues.”

Blaine had been gone…. Blaine had been gone because he’d been stuck in the body of a dog, because he’d been with Kurt. He flushed with shame, feeling an illogical sense of remorse for depriving these people of their leader and placing them in danger. It wasn’t like Blaine’s being a dog was his doing or like he could have undone it had he known.

Still.

“I’m sorry.” He muttered and it was a moment more of them all looking between each other before Allie asked, “Sorry for what, Honey?”

“I don’t know…. Keeping him away so long? I mean, I know he was a dog but if I hadn’t kept him so long maybe he could have come back and…” Kurt fell silent when he noticed the subtle way Quinn was signaling him with a shake of her head, and the horrified gazes of the others. Allie was the only one who didn’t look taken back by his words.

“What do you mean if you hadn’t kept him?” John growled, all trace of friendliness gone from his voice.

Kurt was beginning to realize he’d made some sort of mistake. Blaine’s words flashed in his mind again, about lycans hating captivity, and he began to think none of these ones would thank him for putting a collar on their leader and contributing to the humiliation and pain of his exile. He could insist until he was blue in the face that it hadn’t been like that (that it had been in fact one of the most beautiful times in either of their lives to date) but he knew without having to say a thing that it would be wasted breath. They wouldn’t believe him.

 It was a pity, because for a minute there he’d really thought he might manage to make some friends here.

-*-*-

_“Why so angry, Pet?”_

Jeff’s spine stiffened as the last voice he expected to hear that night slid inside his head, the mocking tenor playing effortlessly at his nerves like they were guitar strings. His lips twisted in a snarl, and for a moment he was worried he’d given himself away. But the others were all still glaring at Kurt, and truthfully the expression on his face fit right in.

 _“Not your damn pet, Duval!”_ He thought back, bleeding all expression off his face and channeling all his anger into the thought. He felt it hit Nick, the way his dominance hung heavy over him, forced him to take a step backward before his guard was back up. Jeff bit back a grin.

 _“So you’re not happy I came all this way to see you?”_ Nick didn’t try to bully him again and Jeff allowed himself a smug smile.

_“Don’t be an asshole Nick. Blaine would murder you if he found you skulking in his garden. Go away!”_

The jerk just laughed.

_“So you are worried about me. Here I thought you didn’t care.”_

_“You’re an asshole.”_

_“You’re fighting the inevitable.”_

_“If you mean watching you die, then yes… yes I am fighting that. Stop doing this Nick. We both know it doesn’t end well.”_

There was a pause, and Jeff felt absolutely nothing coming from Nick. That was actually a good thing, as far as Jeff considered it. Nick only ever pulled back from the bond forming between them when he was afraid of giving too much of himself away. He liked to forget it but Jeff was an alpha too. Whatever it said that Nick had dominated him finally, it didn’t mean he wasn’t always hungry to return the favor. He wanted to know every last thing about Nick. Sometimes he thought if he swallowed him up it wouldn’t be enough.

And Wes was right. That was a betrayal. Because Nick wouldn’t be standing outside if someone hadn’t invited him here. He was trying to stop doing that… to stop what was growing between them. He really was.

 _“It ends in blood, Beautiful.”_ Nick finally answered, and the strength of the possession he felt flooded across their bond and Jeff’s mouth opened on a soft gasp. _“But not ours.”_

 


	11. A Trackers Nose.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hid dad always said Kurt could sniff out a sale the next county over. Everybody has things they're good at.

Kurt honestly didn’t know what to expect come morning. It took him a moment to remember where he was when he opened his eyes the first time to predawn light but a quiet snuffle from Blaine reminded him. They had tangled together in their sleep, Kurt’s back pressed to Blaine’s front, Blaine’s arms holding him with what should have been alarming possessiveness, and his chin resting on Kurt’s shoulder like it had been made for such purposes. Kurt didn’t scream, didn’t move. He let his mind focus on the details he remembered: the pack hated him and Blaine had wanted him nearby last night just in case. Kurt hadn’t truly wanted to be on his own either. They’d fallen asleep on separate ends of Blaine’s bed despite the fact that since waking in it for the first time Kurt had spent more of his time lying in it with Blaine than anything else. Blaine’s breath was warm ghosting across his skin.

He thought all of that, and could drum up no response that required his body to move. The only thought prevalent in his mind was how he could smell Blaine everywhere. His scent was strong in this room, in this bed, and with his bare skin pressed against Kurt’s it was like being wrapped in a blanket of it and rather than be scared something inside Kurt was positively chuffed. It was becoming easier and easier to recognize the part of him that was wild, the part Blaine called wolf, because it was that part that was radiating happiness and contentment at the feel and smell of Blaine all around him. Knowing that, it was easier to think past it.

He tried to untangle Blaine’s arms from around his waist and put some distance between them (and it really was very weird to feel your own displeasure so distinctly at your own actions) but Blaine’s arms only tightened and a soft growl of warning rumbled through his chest and against Kurt’s back and he instinctively went still. Blaine buried his nose against Kurt’s neck, his teeth gently grazing, and Kurt actually wriggled in excitement at their touch against his unusually hyper sensitive skin. It was a shock, the sudden burst of concentrated anticipation that bolted through him, momentarily stealing his breath. He arched his back, thrusting his head back and baring as much of his neck as he could manage, an embarrassingly needy whine escaping out of him.

Blaine’s body went still against his, so tense that Kurt knew he was now awake and he felt his cheeks flush hot at the realization that Blaine was waking not just to find them unconsciously spooning but Kurt practically writhing against him like some…

_‘Bitch in heat?’_ His helpful mind supplied. Wasn’t this what Blaine had warned him about, his body being eager for mating and sending out signals?

“Kurt?” Blaine’s sleep roughened voice made something heat in his stomach. He swallowed thickly, making every effort to think past the instinctive responses of his body and operate somewhere above the wild part of him, because that note of hope in Blaine’s voice was as terrifying to him as it was heartbreaking.

“I-I’m sorry,” he gulped past the tense muscles in his throat. “I don’t know what’s happening.” _Please don’t touch me. I’m scared I won’t stop you_ , he thought wildly, not quite brave enough to say it out loud.

Blaine said nothing for a beat, and then suddenly there was air at his back, blessedly cool air that came with precious space, and Kurt could breathe again. He took a couple of deep breaths until the muscles in his body had relaxed, until he was centered and calm and all he wanted was to see Blaine, to look at him and understand what was happening between their bodies. So he turned and met his eyes, relieved at the warmth he found there.

“ _I’m sorry_ ,” he thought and Blaine shook his head.

_“Don’t be. It just means you’re a normal healthy red-blooded adult. Most people want a life partner Kurt, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”_

_“Is that why I did that?”_ He could feel his cheeks heating at the memory, could feel the way his contrition moved from him to Blaine as if his emotions were shadows to cross with Blaine’s

_“Baring the neck is a sign of submission and it’s not by any means always an indication of a willingness to mate but…”_

_“But this time it was.”_

_“Yes. You responded to me, to my mouth being so close to your neck.”_ OK. So note to self, do not bare neck, no matter how you much you think you want to. Kurt could do that. He was still confused on one point however.

_“Why? I thought I’d turned into a werewolf, not a vampire.”_

_“Vampires don’t have a claim on biting you know.”_ Blaine’s amusement echoed through the bond of their minds, bubbly and light like sea foam, slipping back and forth gently like the movement of an ocean wave. It was so strangely and uniquely beautiful that Kurt could understand how two people could spend hours like this, sharing every thought and feeling and making each other smile just for the joy of it.

_“Fair enough, but your teeth were on my neck. Do…lycans suck blood too?”_

_“No. It’s not about blood, Kurt, it’s about forming a bond.”_ Blaine reached out slowly, giving Kurt ample time to resist, and touched the side of his neck. Before this Kurt had never known his senses could focus so singularly on a touch. _“There’s power in the bite, the power to tie both of us to each other body, heart, and soul for the rest of our lives. We call it a bond bite. You’ll see it on many of the mated people in town. Here in the inner guard and down at the school you won’t find too many mated pairs. The kids are too young still and not many guard wolves stay guards long after mating. It tends to den-tie you.”_

_“I almost don’t even need a translator for that. You mean people start having babies and picking out mini vans I take it?”_

_“Basically. All of us settle down eventually.”_

Kurt could fall asleep, gently rocked on the waves of Blaine’s amusement.

_“Not you.”_ He thought, his eyes falling shut, his lips tilting upward at the tender stroke of Blaine’s thumb against his skin.

“ _I don’t have that luxury,”_ Blaine was so sad, the sadness creeping across their minds like fog and perhaps it was the product of being nearly asleep but Kurt could see it happening in pictures. Blaine would take a mate, have a family, but he could never resign his post as Alpha. He would always be split between them and his duty. He would always have to fight the instinct to hold his mate, who should be first, above the pack.  It wasn’t in his cards. He didn’t have the luxury. It would only be worse if his mate was someone he had to leave behind, worrying for him and missing him and unable to help him.

“You really can’t just pick anyone can you?” he mumbled sleepily and Blaine’s answering smile was small.

“No. He’s got to be special. Someone who can handle—”

“You. Trust me Blaine I’ve known the real you for like a day and you’re already one of the most damaged people I’ve ever met.” Blaine’s irritation with that comment was quick and hot like the brush of sandpaper against skin. Kurt grinned burrowing nearer under the sheets on a sleepy sigh. “Don’t deny it. I’ve seen how much these people love you. You’re the only one who seems to think the worst of you. You blame yourself for way too much.”

If wildness had a voice, if that center of ferocity and life in his core could speak.

Blaine smiled.

_“Good thing I’ve got you here now.”_ Kurt could fall asleep to the gentle rock of… Not yet, one last thing.

“‘m not ready yet… to mate.” Something insistent was tugging Kurt back to wakefulness but then Blaine’s arms were around him again and all urgency bled away. Warm lips pressed against his cheek.

“Go back to sleep Kurt.”

And so he did.

***

The second time he woke it was to sunlight and the sound of a hesitant knock on the door. He knew before he even glanced around that Blaine was gone, his scent in the room already taking on a disappointing stale quality. Seriously Hummel, he thought to himself, you are going to get yourself in trouble. Blaine was… well Blaine was something else entirely. But no matter how understanding he was or how happy he made Kurt’s inner wolf, Kurt wasn’t looking to sign up for this life and Blaine certainly came with a LIFE, all caps.

The knock came again and Kurt grunted an acknowledgement before he could really think about it. A moment later he had almost a lap full of over excited teenager in the form of Chandler.

“Good morning!” the blond practically jarred the teeth out of Kurt’s head bouncing on the bed. “Woah you’re sexy with bed-head. I’m eternally jealous; I always look like an electrocuted hedgehog in the morning. Blaine is hella lucky.” Kurt opened his mouth to say that whatever Chandler and the others might think, he and Blaine weren’t actually romantically involved, but he was distracted by Chandlers squeal of sudden delight as he threw himself backwards on the pillows and rolled and rubbed in the sheets like a kitten on speed. He should be annoyed, but Kurt found himself laughing as Chandler sat up, his hair sticking up on all ends (quite like that hedgehog he’d mentioned earlier) and with far too much seriousness not to giggle at he exclaimed, “I’d sub for Blaine for this bed alone. These sheets are a-mazing! Christ this room is amazing, I’m lusting after the gold plated handles on that wardrobe.”

“I take it you’ve never been in here before?” Kurt asked and Chandler gave him a scandalized look.

“Fuck no! The alpha’s room? I don’t have a death wish. But you’re here now and you and I are going to be best friends so it’s not like I’m invading his territory. You did invite me in.”

Kurt supposed he had, though he didn’t recall signing up to be an overly excitable teenagers bestest best friend but considering the fact that as of last night he’d assumed everyone hated him, he wasn’t in a position to be turning down friends.

“After last night I didn’t think I had any friends here,” he pointed out and Chandler fidgeted nervously.

“Yeah, sorry if the others were a bit cold. You don’t know what it’s like for us being caged up. It’s awful. So being turned into some dumb dog who can’t really fight anyone or even talk to anybody and put in a cage is like the seventh level of hell. And you like basically told everyone that you kept Blaine in a cage for months—”

“Actually I didn’t.” Chandler blinked at him in surprise and Kurt rolled his eyes. “You know most humans actually don’t keep their pets locked in cages 24-7? We’re not cruel by default. We don’t just lock things up for the hell of it… unless it’s something that needs it like a bird or—”

“Kurt I get it, I really do, that’s why I’m here and they’re not,” Chandler halted him with a hand to his arm. “But give them time. Because the difference between them and you right now is only that to them, the very idea of a bird being locked up so some human can have the pleasure of looking at it is profoundly cruel.”

Kurt opened his mouth but then closed it again when he realized he didn’t have a single thing to say to that. He couldn’t say he’d never thought of it that way either. He remembered being young, visiting pet stores and zoos with his parents, asking his mother why the bunnies needed cages. He remembered that for the bunnies it was for protection. He wouldn’t want the doggies getting too rough with them now would he?

Well the bunnies wouldn’t need protecting from the doggies if they weren’t bred for a life in a cage in the first place. And how much crueler was it to take a person, a person like Blaine, and turn him into a pet? Kurt had grown up human, loved every pet he’d ever had (would never regret his time with Rex) but it looked so much different when he thought of it from that perspective. A person locked in a cage, helpless and confined with no way back to the loved and the familiar.

Perhaps he could concede that maybe the human way of doing things looked odd and wasn’t by default the right way. Maybe he could understand why these people would be upset that their leader had been imprisoned in this way for twelve months.

“Buuuut,” Chandler jiggled Kurt’s shoulder as he drew out the word. “They’ll get over the past when they see how great you are and how awesome you’re gonna be for Blaine. Everybody—well everybody who isn’t an ass-snout like Headmaster Strand and his rump lickers— just wants their Alpha to be happy. Lycan’s aren’t complicated I promise. We want full bellies, a mate to rub them, and a strong happy alpha. There you go, now you’re an expert.”

Kurt laughed. Somehow he doubted it was truly that simple but something about Chandler’s easy acceptance and endless optimism made him want to believe.

“If you say so.”

“I do say so.  Now come on,” Chandler tugged on his arm. “Get some clothes on that perfect ass, because we’re going to be late for morning patrol.” At Kurt’s first scandalized and then confused expression Chandler just grinned. “We all sleep naked Kurt, no worries, and your ass really is perfect.”

He’d never had a teenager be quite this forward with flattering him but Kurt decided it was best not to mind it. Chandler didn’t come off as threatening; his wolf not so much as stirring even with his touch. “What morning patrol?” He asked instead.

“Some mornings Blaine goes into town so that pack members and towns folk can talk to him about problems and things.” Chandler explained. “He usually takes Wes and David with him but David’s getting less and less with it, so today he’s taking Adam instead.” He seemed positively smug with pride about that. “Which means you, me, and Jeff have got to go too. Only I heard Blaine talking with Wes about letting you sleep, and while I have to say it was super cute how worried about you he seemed, I also happen to know it won’t go down well with the other apprentices if it comes off like you get special treatment.”

No, he didn’t think it would, Kurt frowned as he thought. He already had so much riding against him, he couldn’t imagine he’d earn any points if word got around that he was lying in bed like a princess while his alpha-master (the pack Alpha no less) went out at possible risk to himself.

“Great.” Kurt swung his legs and hopped quickly out of bed, striding for Blaine’s wardrobe. “Honestly, why didn’t he consider that before he just decided things for me? I’m really over this whole ‘all powerful alpha’ bullshit, as if things aren’t hard enough for me already.”

“He’s a dom Kurt, it’s like written in his code to take care of you. They can get really over protective sometimes and you’ve had a rough couple of days from what I hear—”

“Chandler,” Kurt paused to pull one of Blaine’s t-shirts over his head. “Blaine and I aren’t… we’re not together. I’m not his mate I mean.”

“Well duh, you’re not his mate you don’t have a bond bite yet but that doesn’t mean his instincts don’t work and that doesn’t mean you’re not together.”

“We’re not!”

“Kurt he barely lets you out of bed and you’re practically sweating his scent. You’re together, and even if you were thinking about other options right now no alpha here is going to be brave enough to come near you, smelling like that.”

For the second time Kurt opened his mouth to protest, only to find he didn’t have anything to offer. Chandler was right, he and Blaine didn’t exactly act like any platonic friendship he’d ever had. They had practically spent the last two days in bed holding each other for Christ’s sake. He closed his mouth and glared, reaching for a pair of pants. Chandler just looked smug.

***

Westerville wasn’t at all what he was expecting. Even though he had grown up only a few hours away Kurt had never been to Westerville before this, but he’d heard about it. The fact that it had the nation’s largest safe-zone was something talked about even in Lima and everybody was curious what it must be like to live with an entire colony of werewolves on your doorstep.

He’d always imagined Victorian houses with shuttered windows and nervous neighbors peeking through blinds and sprinkling holy water on their doorsteps. In actuality Westerville was just a town like any other, certainly bigger than Lima and far more developed. After Kurt had settled Blaine’s initial protests (insisting that he not be treated like some wilting flower) the six of them had gotten into an ordinary looking van and driven on a dirt road around the lake (Wes regaling them all with the history of the land like the world’s best paid tour guide along the way) and onto an ordinary highway.

“Down there is Annehurst.” Wes pointed to an ordinary looking subdivision as they exited the highway a minute or two later. “It’s the most lycan friendly neighborhood since it’s so close to the safe zone. It’s unofficially part of it actually, since it almost exclusively houses pack members, but there’s still trouble there from time to time.”

“No one would dare enter the forest,” Adam added and next to him Chandler giggled. “Too afraid Blaine will smite them or the land will swallow them whole.”

Kurt grinned.

“But there are occasionally trouble makers who wander in from other neighborhoods, mostly just drunk teenagers,” Blaine said as he slowed the van outside of a little white house—or rather one that had once been white—with a well-kept lawn and dark green shutters. Someone had defaced the side of it with spray painted words of hate. Someone had also knocked over the mail box, torn up the front garden and scrawled the word ‘FREAK’ in spidery letters across the front door.

It was so ugly what people could do to each other. Kurt had always known that better than anyone, had always sympathized with the lycan community on a human level, but something about seeing those words scrawled by human hands against people like Blaine, like Chandler, Adam, Wes and Jeff made him fall quiet and ashamed. He didn’t fully appreciate it either.

Were they showing him this on purpose? What for? To prove how bad humans were? He knew people could be bad. He’d been given personalized lessons on the subject. He was sorry that some people had to suffer because others were assholes but those words on that door had nothing to do with him. He hadn’t put them there and he shouldn’t be answering for every human that had ever done a lycan harm should he?

Kurt shifted uncomfortably beneath the heavy mood that had descended upon the van, and only looked up from his hands when he could no longer bear the weight of eyes on him. He was startled to find the car was emptying as the others opened doors and hopped out.

That blond boy from the arena, Jeff, was the only one still sitting staring at him.

“What?” He snapped at him, unnerved by his stare.

“The woman that lives here,” Jeff paused and nodded to the front door of the house as it opened and a tiny woman with the longest dark hair Kurt had ever seen stepped out, a puppy in her arms. No, not a puppy Kurt’s slow brain put together a moment later as she stroked the animal’s spine against the fur and it turned into a quivering mass of shifting limbs. It was strange to watch a body shift from this vantage, watch bone stretching and reshaping, hair shrinking and disappearing or falling away into the grass, leaving behind seamless and perfectly pale flesh.

Not a puppy but a child, a lycan cub.

“Her name is Lina. In case you’d wondered.”

Kurt didn’t follow Jeff immediately as he exited the van. He was still dealing with his guilt, because of course he hadn’t thought to ask her name. His first thought hadn’t been for her at all but to wonder why Blaine had brought them there and what it was meant to say about _him_.  He wasn’t exactly proud of that.

He might not be like the people who had vandalized this woman’s house he was coming to realize, but that didn’t mean he was without prejudice, it didn’t mean that he couldn’t fall prey to his own built in fears and misjudge them.

_“You’re being too hard on yourself,”_ Blaine’s thoughts reached him and Kurt looked up to find that the others were following Lina as she guided them through the damage and Blaine was the only one still standing waiting for him, Lina’s child clinging to his neck and peering at Kurt curiously.

_“I’m really not though.”_ Kurt sighed, deciding then and there to start observing Blaine’s world without the suspicion tinted glasses for everyone’s sake. He climbed out of the van and strode to join them, but froze as he got a better look at the child in Blaine’s arms.

It was a boy and it wasn’t that the boy looked particularly like Blaine, the only real similarity between them were their matching mops of dark curls and perhaps something similar in their smiles. He couldn’t explain it but he got a good look at the boy and a good whiff of his scent mingling so innocently with Blaine’s and it was like the bottom fell out of his stomach.

Kurt wanted family as much as anyone. He’d been excited to be getting married once, he’d thought off handedly but optimistically about one day adding children to the mix, but it had never been some overwhelming need of his. Children would be great if that was something he and Eric had both wanted at the right time, but they could have done just as well without them.

But Blaine was holding this boy with the sweet smile and the curious blue eyes, and he smelled so familiar even though Kurt had never met him before and he knew without having to ask and… he couldn’t think past the sudden swell of rage within him. He saw Blaine frown and take an involuntary step back as the boy in his arms shrank away from Kurt, his bottom lip wobbling.

Kurt remembered belatedly what Quinn and Blaine had told him about broadcasting his emotions and cubs being susceptible to that, and he quickly turned away from Blaine and the boy and slammed his eyes shut, willing himself not to think, not to feel anything.

So what if Blaine had a kid? So what did that matter to him anyway? He would not feel this rage, this want, this anger… especially at a child who couldn’t help that their father was a lying scumbag!

“That’s it. Just breathe. Picture a wall inside your mind, everything you feel, everything you are is safe behind that wall.” Kurt heard Blaine instruct him, and then his low voice was crooning to the sniffling boy, “See Beni, Kurt’s like you. Sometimes he needs help keeping his insides inside.”

Beni (short for Benjamin his masochistic mind couldn’t help but wonder) giggled and Kurt turned back to them slowly, meeting the boy of three’s still uncertain gaze.  And Kurt realized that he could in fact feel the boy. As Blaine had said his insides were out, his curiosity, his fear, his trust and adoration for the man who held him, his underlining desire for the comfort of his mother, all of it was leaking out of him in gentle waves, like a radio turned low and left to play in the background. He was too young to have much skill walling it in, and too young to block out any of Kurt’s emotional waves.

He approached the boy slowly, as not to frighten him further, and made his voice as gentle as he could possible make it.

“Hi. I’m Kurt. What’s your name?”

The child considered him for a moment before pulling his head far enough from Blaine’s chest to mumble, “Benito.” 

“Benito?” That was Italian wasn’t it? “That’s a great name.”

The boy beamed toothily at him and mumbled something that sounded like grazie, definitely Italian then.

“Lina is from Rome, she named Benito after her father. The oldest males in her family all share it,” Blaine’s eyes were a bit too knowing as he explained, and Kurt waited, unwilling to make a bigger fool of himself over the man than he already feared he had. “His father died before he was born and Lina couldn’t risk trying to get back to her homeland so she came to Westerville seeking sanctuary. You’ll find many people do that.”

Kurt stared at him, trying to gauge the truth of his words and Blaine stared back. He didn’t think Blaine would lie to him… he hoped not, he reasoned that Blaine had no real reason to. Except Blaine wanted Kurt to stay, Blaine wanted to mate with him and if he thought Kurt would object learning that Blaine had already sired a cub elsewhere…

It didn’t make sense. He recognized that it didn’t. It was all getting jumbled in his head. Blaine was gay but how gay and would that matter in the middle of a full moon he didn’t know. He shouldn’t care what Blaine had done years before they met and they weren’t even together for Christ’s sake but Blaine smelled fantastic and so much like his and that boy smelled so much like him and he didn’t smell anything like Kurt and he hated that!

Benito whined in Blaine’s arms and Kurt took a hasty step back, ashamed at himself for losing control again. He could have wept with relief when he heard the voices of the others returning from their walk around the house.

“They call us the pack of strays,” Adam said as he joined them, and Kurt saw that it was only he and Lina who had returned and strangely they were both holding stacks of folded clothes. “It’s mostly true too, forty percent of us weren’t actually born here.”

“Why is that?” Kurt wondered as he watched Lina take her son from Blaine’s arms, unable to help but notice how beautiful the woman was. She glanced at him warily, her body unconsciously shifting Benito as far away from Kurt as it could.

“The world is not friendly to us,” Lina explained in a heavily accented voice. “In Rome it is worst of all. The pope calls us devils and he hunts us like we sprang up from hell itself. Here at least, people might damage my house but they will hesitate before they hurt me or my son. A moment’s hesitation is all I need to protect him.” His nose was telling him omega but a wolf was still a wolf and Kurt had no doubt that Lina wouldn’t hesitate to do away with anything threatening Benito. She watched him as carefully as he watched her.

 “I’m sorry about your house,” Kurt said after a moment of weighted silence had settled over the small circle. “It’s awful that someone did this to you.” Lina watched him for a moment more, as if to gauge his sincerity (he could see where Benito got his caution from) and then she nodded, her lips tilting in the beginnings of a smile.

“It’s a house. It can be repainted,” she replied with a small shrug. When she turned to Blaine Kurt watched as the distance completely melted off her face and was replaced by warm regard and familiarity. “You did not have to come here yourself, Blaine, the Hewett’s have already offered to help me with the repainting.”

“Stop it,” Kurt’s teeth clenched as Blaine tugged playfully at the woman’s collar. “It would take you days to fix all of this. We’ll all help. I’ll call the community together and it’ll be done in a night, so you don’t have to keep looking at it.”

_“He’s like this with everyone you know.”_ Kurt almost jumped out of his skin at the sound of Adam’s voice sliding into his mind. He glanced at the blond to find the taller man smiling at him with far too much knowledge and Kurt arched a brow at him. Adam snorted softly. “ _It’s just that you look murderous, and your nostrils keep flaring like you smell something bad.”_

_“And?”_ If Kurt could have thought in glares he would have.

_“And there’s no need. She’s like a sister to him and Blaine is a favorite with all the cubs, especially the students at the school. They’ve all been torn away from their families and told they have to grow up strong and fend for themselves because they’re safer here than at home. I remember what it was like for me to arrive here, and the Alpha then was much different Kurt, much much different. Blaine’s a good Alpha, he makes this place feel like home.”_

_“But Benito, he…”_ Kurt hesitated a moment, unsure if he could open himself up to the ridicule of being wrong… the consequences of being right. Adam took the choice right out of his hands.

_“Smells like him?”_ At Kurt’s widening eyes he nodded almost imperceptibly. _“It’s unusual but not unheard of. Family members often share a similar scent; sometimes two people who are destined to connect do as well. There have been wolves that mate because they recognize a similarity in their scents. I doubt he’s meant to mate with the boy so I’d say you’re in the clear, yeah?”_

Kurt looked back to Lina and Blaine, chatting about repairs and felt embarrassed for his outburst… or inburst. He didn’t think it could be called an outburst when his feelings were internal and he hadn’t exactly chosen to share them. Regardless, Lina and Benito hadn’t deserved his suspicion or his unreasonable anger. It was humbling really, watching them now. Kurt was far from unkind but little of his adult life revolved around others. He went to work and he worried about his bills, the weather, and whatever show they were working on. His life did not revolve around the needs of a community, everyone else’s lives did not come before his, women like Lina did not depend on him for protection and a safe place for their children to grow up in. Blaine’s life was so alien to him, so leaden with responsibility that for a moment Kurt could only marvel at him.

Blaine thought so little of himself as a leader, as a person in result of some of his failures. Didn’t he hear the pride in Adam’s voice? Didn’t he see the trust in Lina’s eyes? Didn’t he see how Benito adored him?

“ _I don’t know what I’m doing half the time.”_ Kurt admitted between the two of them. _“I smelled Benito and I just flipped. It felt awful. I hated the thought that Blaine had… that Benito was…”_

_“You’re possessive, Kurt, all lycan’s are from the meekest omega to the most aggressive alpha. It’ll drive you crazy, smelling your mate on someone else’s progeny. We don’t have children out of a mating bond for a reason and when moon related accidents happen the child is always immediately given to the mated pair so that the other mate can imprint their scent on the child before another scent takes. I met a she-wolf in Columbus who—”_

_“He’s not my mate.”_

_“Pardon?”_

_“Blaine… he and I aren’t, we’re not a thing. I mean we’re friends but we aren’t anything…more.”_

_“Excuse me if I’m being a bit presumptuous, but are you sure?”_

Kurt audibly squawked and Blaine and Lina halted their conversation to stare at him and Kurt flushed, hissing furiously in his thoughts, _“Yes I’m sure!”_

_“I’m not judging, I’m just saying. I don’t typically share a bed with my friends and covet the right to have their cubs.”_

“Oh alright,” Kurt elbowed the blond hard in the ribs and hated the fact that his sniggers actually made him want to laugh. Okay, he could admit he was sending out some confusing signals but god why did everyone have to point it out to him? “Shut up. I get it. You’re worse than Chandler.”

“I’m wounded.” Adam looked no such thing.

_“What about me?”_ A chirper voice hollered like a gong in his head and Kurt saw from the matching winces of the others that it wasn’t just his. From a couple of yards over a pepper coated wolf raced towards them, as if someone had announced a prize for whoever reached them fastest. A black wolf (Wes his nose said) and a sandy coated one (Jeff) followed more sedately after. Almost before Kurt could blink Chandler was standing naked in front of them, and he’d be envious of his swift shifting ability if he weren’t so jarred by it. His eyes could scarcely believe how fast the bones had twisted, how quickly skin could seem to melt and roll, without associating pain to it.

But for the sheen of sweat on his skin and the slight wobble to his step, Chandler didn’t act like the shift had hurt at all.

“You guys were talking about me weren’t you? Not that I blame you if you were but it’s rude if you don’t share.”

“What’s rude, Chatterbox,” Adam pulled the teenager in, swinging an arm around his neck in the sort of playful chokehold Finn and his buddies always seemed so thrilled with, “is keeping your Alpha waiting on a report.”

Wes  and Jeff had reached them by now and Kurt watched as the two of them shifted back to their more human forms and tried not to blush at the strangeness of three men standing in someone’s front yard butt naked. Wes fixed Chandler with a stern glare and the teen flushed, scrambling out from beneath Adam’s arm and practically stripping over his feet to stand in front of Blaine.

“Beta-Apprentice Chandler Kiehl returning with a report for my Alpha.”

Blaine caught his eye and Kurt battled a grin at Chandler’s formality and serious tone. The poor kid must have mistaken this for a remake of Saving Private Ryan.

“Go ahead Chandler.”

“I caught a scent. Two human males judging by the heinous amounts of Axe body spray they were wearing.” Chandler recounted eagerly for him while Blaine listened intently. “The trail keeps going through the neighbor’s yard and towards the highway.”

At this news Blaine’s brow furrowed and he looked to Jeff for confirmation, the older blond nodded and gestured towards the neighboring home as he said, “we caught the scent cutting through the O’Donnell’s yard heading straight for the fence. Whoever they were, they obviously walked here from another part of town. Chandler’s right. He and I can follow it Alpha, see where it leads.”

“It’s strange…” Kurt mused aloud, only blinking a little when he realized everyone’s attention had focused on him.

“What’s strange about it?” Jeff asked. “Humans vandalize us all the time.”

“But you patrol right?” Kurt asked.

“We do but kids have slipped by before during the guard change, all they need is a minute or two to throw some paint around,” Wes replied and the others nodded but something about the situation still struck Kurt as odd.

“It’s just strange that a group of teenagers on foot timed things just right to get past your patrol. And you know, if I were going to vandalize the home of a creature who could easily out run me and tear my face off I wouldn’t try to sneak in on foot. I’d bring a car.”

“Well it’s good to know that you’ve got how _you’d_ vandalize us planned out Kurt. The next time it happens we’ll know who to ask.” Jeff sneered at him and Kurt narrowed his eyes. He knew that Blaine was gearing up to set the teenager down a peg, the way he seemed to always know what Blaine was doing in the back of his mind, but he had been the one to insist on coming out here, he had been the one to tell Blaine not to coddle him just because this was hard and the others were reluctant to accept him.

So before Blaine could say anything Kurt turned to Jeff and pinned him with the same look he gave his underlings at the theater. “Listen, you’ve got a problem with the fact that I’m too human or whatever fine. It’s no love lost for me, kid. So you can take that stick out of your ass and have a seat because you’ve sure got a lot to learn. For starters it makes no sense whatsoever to get your ass in a twist over the fact that I was human before this, and then completely ignore me when I say that this doesn’t strike me as something any human with a brain in their head would do.”

In the back of his mind Kurt half expected Jeff to react like any normal teen would to an adult’s rebuke but Jeff was not any normal teenager. The blond growled at him, the sound welling up from deep within his chest, as he took an aggressive step forward and it was only instinct alone that kept Kurt from taking a step back. They were practically nose to nose, Jeff’s teeth bared and sharp as the teen threatened him with warning growls and Kurt didn’t think about it, he let that volatile thing in his center rise to the surface and curl his lips in a snarl.

He could feel it, the wolf, so close under his skin as his heart hammered and every last nerve ending ached for the change. He could see it in Jeff’s eyes too, in the dilation of his pupils and the fury he saw matched there. They stood off, each of them waiting for the other, neither of them willing to back down but neither of them willing to risk a fight. But fight Kurt would because the wolf was in control now, the wolf knew the other in front of it was younger, smaller and underneath his bravado afraid. The scent of fear was clinging to him sickly sweet, it was a wonder none of the others could smell it.

It was Jeff in the end who lowered his eyes first. They went wide with realization that it was either back down or risk getting his tail handed to him and a light of grudging respect entered his eyes before he lowered his head, the sign of submission the end of their stalemate.

Kurt snapped his mouth shut and said nothing else to the teenager, turning to Blaine instead as he demanded, “let me look at it. Smell it I mean…please,” he added as a last thought.

“What the hell for?” Jeff grumbled, still not quite meeting his eyes. Kurt hadn’t been lycan long enough to be a good judge but it seemed unusual that someone, an apprentice no less, would be this antagonistic even after admitting they weren’t willing to pit their strength against his, especially an apprentice who was covered in the sour sweet smell of fear and was desperately trying to hide it. And yet Jeff persisted.  “I hate to be the one who points this out but you’ve gone wolf exactly once and you have no idea how to pick out the different notes in scents. What exactly is it that you think you can do that Chandler and I can’t?”

“While he didn’t have to put it quite so rudely, Jeff is right.” Wes agreed. “You’re still very green Kurt and—”

“And that’s what this whole thing is about right? Me being an apprentice, me following you guys around, it’s so I can learn isn’t it?” Kurt cut in before he could further protest.

“It is,” Blaine agreed.

“So then teach me. I’m not useless just because I wasn’t born like you. I can’t shift as fast as Chandler but I’m figuring out I’ve got a great nose.” At their baffled stares Kurt sighed and decided to just go for broke. He’d thought that these things he was able to smell and the things his brain catalogued about them were something every lycan could do, but Jeff was reeking of fear stronger and stronger with each passing second and none of the others were responding to it so maybe they couldn’t.

“Lina is an omega and Benito is possibly one too…” at the mothers widening eyes he clarified, “his scent is more muddled… like parts of it are changing. I couldn’t tell you the how of it, but I smell him and I know that no matter what else changes, he’ll always smell like Blaine… it’s like they’re cut from the same cloth.” Thinking about that made Kurt’s stomach churn so he quickly moved on.

“Chandler had some sort of meat pie for breakfast, and no, I couldn’t tell you what because the garlic is too strong. None of you are wearing deodorant, which normally I’d find disgusting but given that when I concentrate I can smell the chocolate milk Benito drank this morning I can understand why scented products might not be a big thing with you guys.”

Kurt finished, opening eyes he hadn’t even realized he’d closed to concentrate on his sense of smell. His eyes seemed to sought Blaine first and found the other male regarding him with something so close to awe he had the insane urge to wriggle with pride where he stood. Since he wasn’t Chandler he resisted. The others were staring at him dumbfounded with varying degrees of disbelief.  Jeff in particular was looking nervous and uncomfortable.

“You’ve got a trackers nose Kurt,” Blaine informed him and Kurt didn’t know what to think when he started laughing to himself.

“What?” He asked uncertainly and Blaine grinned back at him.

“Wasn’t Burt the one who always said you could sniff out a sale in the next county?” Kurt’s answering grin was almost too wide for his face. Call him vain but he was positively giddy with the discovery that far from being the disappointment the others insisted he was, even in this form he had gifts. He had things he was good at and things he’d really have to work on, just like everybody else.

“So let me help,” he closed the scant feet between him and Blaine in his eagerness and grasped his arm. “I’ve got a good nose; I just don’t really know how to use it yet. But I do know that something’s fishy about this, I do know that it’s strange that someone would take a bath in body spray to throw off the average lycan nose. That’s just too well set up and you know it, Blaine.”

_“It sounds like a deception,”_ Blaine said for his ears alone and Kurt nodded. Blaine announced for the others, “I want to investigate this further. Jeff and Kurt, you’re the best trackers. You’ve my permission to follow. You’re to investigate, not engage. Understand? Under no circumstances are you to allow yourselves to be seen. If the trail leads you to human residences you come back to the house and you report. ”

“But I—” Jeff fell silent at Blaine’s hard stare and swallowed his protest. “Yes Alpha.” Turning to Kurt he instructed with a petulant air, “hurry up and strip.”

Oh. That was right. They’d expect him to go wolf, even though his nose was better than all of theirs in this form.

“My nose is pretty strong. Can’t I—” he tried to wheedle out of stripping in front of a crowd of near strangers and facing the agony of shifting his shape again.

“A second ago you were going feral on me and now you’re too pansy to take off your clothes?!” Jeff demanded with an impatient scowl and Kurt worked his jaw. He was sure he looked like an asshole his nose stuck up in the air like that, but it was a defensive move that was too ingrained a move to ditch now. The kid was right. He was being a baby about this.

_“I promise not to look at your ass, though Chandler has assured me it’s perfect”_ Kurt shot Adam a withering look as the blonds unhelpful commentary and began lifting the shirt over his head.

He’d practically begged Blaine for this, just to prove he was worth something to these people (and god wasn’t that pathetic). He might as well see it through.

TBC


	12. The Master

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trust Sebastian to get them tangled up with the antichrist.

Char wanted to kill Jane. She hated the morning shift. There was nothing worse than a narcotic early morning commuter in an unfathomable rush, who somehow still managed to find their way into her line with enough time to be a bitch about the fact that she couldn’t produce perfectly steamed lattes for twenty people in less than five minutes, go figure. She and Jane had traded shifts last month so that at least half the week Jane covered mornings, and usually Jane was pretty reliable but she hadn’t shown up to work in three days. Now Donna was scrambling to cover her shifts, which was how Char found herself at her least favorite activity of the day, serving coffee and pastries at Brewers at god awful in the morning.

Once the mid-morning lull hit, after the last of the suits had been bustled in and out and it was too early still for lunch, Char let the trained smile drop from her face and glared at the young woman eyeing the counter as if she might approach for a refill. Char was in desperate need of a cigarette and now seemed like a mighty fine time to take a break. She gestured for Jess (their newest barista) to take the counter (if he couldn’t interpret her wave in its general direction he was never going to make it here) and hollered to Donna that she was taking cig break.

“Take the trash with you,” Donna hollered back and Char rolled her eyes. Donna was still yammering as Char emptied the trash bins and hauled them out the back door. “How many times do I got to tell you guys not to let it pile up in the morning? And don’t think I didn’t see the bags out in the alley. Put them in the bin you guys! They stink and no one wants to buy coffee when the place smells like funk.”

“This alley is what smells like fucking funk, Jesus,” Char grumbled as she dropped the trash outside the door and dug in her apron for her cigs and a lighter. She hated her job; she had no trouble admitting it (she vented about the fact frequently). She didn’t blame Jane for fleeing the place, except of course for leaving her here with the slack to pick up. And she’d never have pegged Jane for the type to quit without word. Incomprehensibely earnest, obscenely perky at odd hours of the morning, she was the type of girl places like this creamed themselves to hire. It drove Char crazy usually but Jane had been alright, she had taken half her morning shifts when anyone else wouldn’t have (Char would have told herself to fuck right off).

“Still… a little fucking warning would have been nice.” She took a long drag on her cigarette and held it in just long enough to make it hurt a little and blew out slowly, ignoring the impulse to gasp for breath. She liked little games like that. It made her feel more in control. Less like she was wasting time at a dead end job with no plans and a truly heinous funk hovering over the trash bins.

“Jesus.” Char crinkled her nose. A girl couldn’t even get a decent smoke in anymore. Something had gone rancid in there and it was just her luck she’d have to open the damn thing. Evening shift sure hadn’t bothered; she could see the bags piled by the side just as Donna had said. What the hell was rotting in there anyway? She’d never smelled anything like that.

Sighing she snuffed out her cigarette and hauled the bags over to the bin. Getting the lid open was always a hassle but she managed, only to immediately drop it again when the putrid stench within rushed up to greet her and she gagged.

“Jesus fucking Christ, I do not get paid enough for this!” She screeched to the empty alley banging her hand against the offending metal. She thrust the lid back up with an agitated grunt and pinched her nose closed with her fingers. She was hauling bags in as quickly as she was able when something bright caught her eye. She paused for a moment, squinting at what looked like a jacket sleeve buried in the trash.

A bright pink jacket sleeve, like the one on that gaudy jacket Jane was so proud of, the one from that musical she was always going on about, Hair Gel or something. Why would Jane throw out her favorite jacket at work? She wondered, and then her brain caught up with her eyes and she realized that the sleeve ended in a cuff and the cuff ended in a hand that disappeared under more trash.

There was a human arm in the trash. An arm attached to a body wearing Jane’s jacket.

Char dropped the lid and screamed.

-*-*-

Kurt had always been a fairly self-reliant kid. Even when his mother had been alive he’d been the sort to want to try everything himself as quickly as possible. After she was gone it had been just him and dad and they had needed to take care of each other. He’d never been the sort to cower from bad dreams or monsters under the bed (though his father had seemed to have a knack for knowing when he needed a guy’s night with a glass of warm milk and a late night movie on the sofa). Pain had never stopped him from doing anything he’d decided on before. If that had been the case he wouldn’t have survived high school.

He knew that he had to learn how to shift properly. He knew he would survive it. He’d seen firsthand with Chandler how fast and seemingly painless it could be. He knew all of that with his head and yet he was standing in somebody’s front lawn completely naked and completely unable to make it happen.

The others tried to help. Wes told him to picture a forest in his mind and go to meet it (whatever the hell that meant) and Chandler had told him not to be anxious.

“I’m one of the fastest shifters in the pack so don’t feel like you’ve got to do it like I did. It’s okay if you go slowly at first.”

Jeff was unimpressed and grumbled that before he was dead would be nice.

So Kurt tried again, he squeezed his eyes shut and pictured the forest and though his skin began to pebble with sweat it didn’t so much as quiver.

“Maybe it’s performance nerves?” Chandler whispered to Adam and Kurt flushed a brilliant scarlet.

 _“This is utterly humiliating.”_ He thought and he met Blaine’s eyes with a wounded glare as Blaine took him by the shoulder and turned him away from the group.

“It’s his first day,” he reminded them all. “None of you guys could shift on command your first day out. He just needs proper coaching. Lina?”

She and Blaine shared some silent communication and then the woman was inviting the others inside for something to drink, leaving Kurt alone in the yard with Blaine and Jeff. Jeff walked off a ways to give them space and Blaine looked to Kurt with an apologetic expression.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have expected you to take to shifting like it was natural.”

“Why not?” Kurt scoffed bitterly. “It’s what you’ve expected with everything else.” Maybe it was petulant of him to say it, but it was true nonetheless. Blaine and all the others not only seemed to expect him to fit right in (regardless of whether he wanted to or not) but to do it better than everyone else, _just_ to prove he deserved their good regard. Frankly it sucked.

He felt Blaine’s surprise splash cool over his mind but he didn’t look away.

“Point taken,” Blaine replied after a moment with voice laden with guilt. Kurt’s mouth opened, carried by some instinct to apologize and soothe but he snapped it shut just as quickly. Instincts be damned! Maybe alpha wolves wouldn’t have their heads so far up their asses if everyone wasn’t so willing to excuse their bullshit all the time. Blaine’s smile was slow and fond as he brushed Kurt’s fallen hair out of his eyes and Kurt suspected he’d guessed exactly what he was thinking. “No, Kurt, I apologize. It won’t happen again.”

“You can’t promise that,” Kurt pointed out, nodding towards Jeff and Blaine’s lips dipped in a frown. He was right, Blaine couldn’t control what the others expected. But he could set the example.

“At least it won’t with me,” Blaine promised as he looked back at him, his thumb stroking Kurt’s temple. Kurt’s skin raised with goose bumps as hunger opened up in the center of his chest and there… he’d found it, that miniature tempest in his core, the wild thing using his body for shelter. It was only coming face to face with it, staring into its howling depths that Kurt realized he hadn’t been able to find it because he didn’t want to.

It was too ferocious, too alien and invasive, too primed to burst out of his skin with violence and bone shattering agony that he remembered far too well. He shut his eyes with a whimper, taking an unconscious step backward but he was halted by Blaine’s hands gripping him tightly, thumbs stroking his temples with contrasting gentleness.

“There. You feel it?” Kurt shook his head and Blaine didn’t even acknowledge the lie. “The wolf doesn’t hide from you Kurt. You _are_ the wolf.” He didn’t want to be. He didn’t say the words but he thought them, he felt them so deeply that the roaring inside his ears began to dim, the wolf to slink away and Blaine sighed. “You’re not shifting, Kurt, because deep down you don’t want to. You’re afraid.”

“Well it hurts!” he snapped in reply, sounding about as childish as he felt, but dammit wouldn’t Blaine be afraid? Couldn’t he for one moment think about what it was like to be human and lose yourself to an animal, to have it come tearing out of your skin with pain you couldn’t even describe and to lose all control to it? Did Blaine think it was easy for him to admit how terrified of it he was, to be too afraid to perform the most essential and basic of lycan abilities when every time he turned around one of them was reminding him of how weak he was just for being human? Nothing about this was easy.

 _“It’s okay to be scared, Kurt.”_ Kurt wasn’t sure whether Blaine had read his mind or if he just knew Kurt too well, but his touch remained tender even as his thoughts wrapped around him like a blanket, warm and bolstering. _“But the fear is what’s hurting you. You’re the wolf, and as long as you remain torn between this body and your other it will hurt.”_

 _“Okay, but fear is not something I can turn off like a light switch...”_ Kurt reached up to grasp Blaine’s wrists and meet his eyes. He wished for his own prides sake that the stinging in them had nothing to do with tears but he knew different. But Blaine, even in this, was kind. If they were a bit glassier than normal he had the grace not to mention it. It was strange to be standing bare assed in someone’s front yard, only to find that the thing which made him feel the most naked had nothing to do with his skin. _“I wish I could just stop being afraid.”_

 _“Allie used to tell me that courage isn’t about not being afraid. Courage is about not letting fear define you or the outcome. And, Kurt, you’re the last person I need to teach about courage.”_ Kurt closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, smiling faintly as Blaine’s brow bumped his, their noses touching in an affectionate nuzzle that made warmth curl around his core like a great cat.

He had to do it, not for Blaine but for himself. He had to remember that at the end of the day it wasn’t about what the others said, but only about what he wanted to say about himself. He didn’t want to be afraid of himself forever.

 _“Okay.”_ He opened his eyes to stare back into Blaine’s, watching them spark with shared determination. In that moment he thought he’d follow Blaine anywhere if it could always be like that. He was ready, the wolf inside standing at attention, the human finally willing to step back and concede the reins of control.

 _“Okay, watch me.”_ With an encouraging squeeze Blaine took several steps backward, quickly doing away with his shirt and tossing it aside. Kurt was still thrumming with nervous energy, the part of him he still recognized as human sick with anxious anticipation but even still his breath caught as Blaine slid his loose pants over his hip bones and down his legs. A surge of restlessness welled up and his fingers twitched. He jerked in alarm. He balled his hands into fists and Blaine called out to him, “no. Don’t resist it.” Kurt slowly uncurled his hands and watched them twitch and shake with trepidation.

“You’re doing wonderfully,” Blaine assured him and Kurt forced himself to look away from his quivering body and back to where Blaine stood a few paces away. “Now just watch me okay, and you’ll feel it happening. Don’t try and stop it. I know this side of yourself can be frightening at times but not everything about your wolf is teeth and claws, Kurt. You and I are friends right?” Blaine looked as if he was waiting for a response so he nodded and Blaine’s confident grin was betrayed by the cool splash of relief Kurt felt travel across their bond. “Good. That means your wolf and I are friends too and when you see me your primary instinct is going to be to play. That’s good right? Who doesn’t like to play?”

Kurt still didn’t think it was going to be that easy to relax and let this foreign presence take over his body but Blaine looked so earnest it made him smile despite everything. He made it sound endearing, like they were little boys and all Kurt had to do was hurry up and put on his winter coat so they could go play in the snow.

He watched the freakish shifting of skin over bone, the bending and twisting of Blaine’s skeleton like something straight out of a Hollywood film with a clenched jaw. He seemed to be shifting slowly just for Kurt’s benefit. At this speed it was easier to see that there was a pattern to the movement. It was almost as if a wave ran through his body, from head to toe, smudging Blaine as it went like an artist’s paint brush blurring man and beast together. It was almost beautiful like this.

Blaine must have read the thought in his mind because the ears on top of his head twitched and his tail wagged and Kurt bit back a giggle. He looked like a cartoon like this, standing on two feet with body covered in fur—a Wolman if Kurt had ever seen one. His smell was stronger like this and Kurt was responding to it. He could feel his own excitement spiking and at first he tried to tamp it down, but then he remembered he was supposed to be attempting the opposite and took a deep breath.

Blaine finished the shift quickly; sitting in front of Kurt so regally it was no wonder to him books always equated such nobility to wolves, his size and the intensity in his eyes far too intimidating. But something inside of him was eager, so very eager, and Kurt let it go.

-*-*-

He hadn’t seen Kurt like this since the full moon. Though it had only been a matter of days Blaine had almost convinced himself he’d attributed more to Kurt’s beauty in this body than could possibly be real, that the perfection of it could only belong in his dreams. And he’d dreamed of him every night since. There was a danger in being together with him like this. This was who they were at their most basic, their most raw and animal, and everything about Kurt from tail to snout was as lethal as it was ethereal. Utter perfection. Blaine wanted to claim him, but he kept a tight rein on his impulses. He must not. Kurt couldn’t be responsible for what he did when he gave the wolf control, not at first, but Blaine could be.

And still, every inch of him called to Blaine and he could not stop himself curling against that warm flesh as it grew silver hair. He washed Kurt’s shifting form tenderly of sweat as the grey wolf whined from the stress of shift and the resulting pain. When electric blue eyes finally opened to stare into his he panted happily.

_“Hi.”_

-*-*-

Play

His Alpha licked his muzzle and ‘welcome’ burst over him like bubbles. He jumped up, turning in a quick excited circle and dipped into an invitational bow. _Play._ He was happy, so very happy, to see him. His Alpha barked and then he chased and the grey wolf ran, happiness burbling inside like a brook as he turned and pounced and they wrestled with each other. He sniffed all over him, burying his nose in thick black fur and dragging his scent inside, growling softly at the changes. An omega female had been close to him, a pup from her loins was all over him. He growled disapprovingly and licked the intruding scents away, rubbing their pelts together to bring them back to perfect. His friend was _his_ , his _mate_. He should smell like him. He wanted to smell like _him_ , wanted to get under him and...

_“Kurt? Blaine?”_

Kurt? What was a Kurt? The grey halted above the black wolf and looked up to find a younger wolf standing over them, pack but not a friend. A threat? He snarled and snapped warningly and the sandy wolf jumped back, ears lowering in subservience.

 _“It’s okay, Kurt,”_ his friend said with a calming lick under his jaw. _“Jeff is pack. He’s a friend too. Come on Kurt, come back now. This is us, primitive, but we’re people too. We’re capable of so much more than our primitive instincts.”_

Kurt could hear the grin in his thoughts, the now familiar feel of his amusement rippling across his senses so warm and delightful he leaned down and licked Blaine’s muzzle. And that was right. _He_ was a Kurt, not just a wolf but a man. It had been easier this time, regaining control, perhaps because this time his urges were not quite so violent.

 _“If you’d rather spend the morning courting Alpha I’d understand,”_ Jeff thought at them and Kurt realized he was all over Blaine and leapt off him, unable to flush in this body but practically humming with mortification just the same. He looked back at Jeff, expecting more hostility from him but Kurt could almost swear there had been something tender in his voice just then.

 _“No, no, sorry we got carried away,”_ Blaine quickly apologized. _“How are you feeling Kurt?”_

 _“Wobbly… but better than last time,”_ he replied after a moment to take stock of his body. His muscles ached like they’d been over taxed, as if he’d gone on a mile run and needed a break. _“That was… fun actually,”_ he allowed and Blaine’s tail twitched happily. Kurt had to admit to some relief. It hadn’t been without pain, and he was nowhere near ready to attempt it on his own, but it hadn’t been anywhere near the agony of the last attempt so that was at least hopeful.

Blaine shifted back to his other shape and quickly gathered his clothes while Kurt and Jeff got their bearings, sniffing each other warily. When he was put to rights again he turned to them both.

“Okay you two can go,” he instructed and as they both turned he spoke again, this time his voice raising the fur on Kurt’s spine and building pressure in his chest. He instinctively crouched to the ground, weighed by Blaine’s dominance. “Remember, you’re not to engage any humans or allow yourselves to be seen. You’re more experienced Jeff so consider this an opportunity to teach. I want you to remember that he’s depending on you and that I’m trusting you. I’m trusting you with his life. Do you understand?”

Kurt saw Jeff swallow and then his voice was answering with determination and that new off putting tenderness underlining it that made no sense to Kurt, _“yes, Alpha. I do.”_

Kurt got irritated. He was a grown man for god’s sake, not some sheltered medieval miss off on her own for the first time or whatever nonsense this was, and Jeff just a teenager. Blaine was kidding himself if he thought Kurt couldn’t pick up on the subtext of the conversation, but Blaine was right that Jeff was more experienced, that Kurt would have to rely on Jeff more than he’d like to. If something happened it really was going to come down to Jeff getting them out of it.

And okay, yes, at least half of him was rather pleased with the fact that Blaine had basically told Jeff to bring him back safe because he’d _care_ if something happened to him, but they’d already established that Kurt’s inner wolf thought rolling over for Blaine was the greatest idea on the planet and couldn’t be trusted to be making the decisions here. So Kurt just gave him a look (as best he could with these face muscles) and thought for him only, _“you could always trust me with my life too you know. It is still mine isn’t it?”_

 _“Too much?”_ Blaine looked to him, his lips tilting in a sheepish smile that was unfairly endearing.

 _“Way too much.”_ Kurt responded and Blaine winced and nodded. Kurt sighed inwardly and admitted, _“the sentiment was nice… but I really can take care of myself.”_

“And will you?” _Don’t let I’d hate it hate it don’t want don’t let…_ The rush of thought and emotion was intense and jumbled. Kurt saw and felt the moment Blaine walled himself off, the silence screaming over their bond leaving such sudden emptiness that Kurt whimpered, straining for the return of Blaine’s mind brushing against his. Blaine took a breath and visibly relaxed and Kurt felt him return, gentle and apologetic over the bond.

“I know you think… but it’s not just _that_ it’s… you’re my best friend. I’d be upset if something happened to you,” was all he said in the end and then he just stood there, so open and vulnerable that Kurt wished he had arms again. He would have pulled him into a hug and held on, maybe till forever.

 _“I’ll be careful, Blaine,”_ was what he said instead, but if this bond went two ways (which he knew it did) then Blaine must have felt how dearly Kurt loved him. Blaine, however strange their road had been up until now, was his friend too. If there had been any part of him still reluctant to place trust in what they’d built before, it was gone now. They were too wrapped up in each other’s emotions not to know how deep they ran. Blaine loved him, and Kurt was afraid that meant eventually he was going to have to hurt him.

He was deeply afraid that he might love him back.

 _“Are you ready?”_ Jeff asked, breaking the moment. He rose and pointed his body towards the neighbor’s yard. _‘Not remotely’_ , Kurt thought to himself but he followed Jeff just the same.

Of all the things Kurt expected Jeff to say as they trotted across the yard it was not, _“do you know that in the wild, alpha wolves mate with other alpha wolves?”_

_“Uh… no?”_

_“They do. The alpha male mates with the alpha female. They’re not incompatible, and the female isn’t weak just because she subs for the male.”_ Kurt had no idea what Jeff was getting at but he got the feeling Jeff wasn’t really talking for him anyway. He could tell however that what he was saying was very important to the teen so he didn’t interrupt. And then Jeff slowed their trot and turned to him, his amber eyes boring into Kurt’s and he knew he had the teen’s undivided attention.

_“Did you know that when they’re courting, when two wolves are preparing to mate, they separate from the others? Not physically, but it’s like they become one. They stay with each other almost all of the time, where one goes so does the other, even while they are sleeping. Wolves play together sure but courting wolves they touch, constantly, like every minute they’re thinking about each other and showing their affection is simply a part of breathing. They’re not just mindless beasts, it’s not about fucking, they can only breed once a year and yet the alpha male and female are like that all year, Kurt, all year. It’s forever.”_

_“Why are you telling me this?”_

_“Because you’re sleeping in my Alpha’s bed, because you two can’t go five minutes without touching, because my Alpha is courting you and all you want is to go back to your stupid life! So I think you deserve to understand what it will mean for you if you don’t stop. You want to go be human fine, leave, get out before your feelings get too deep and don’t come back! ”_ A low growl rumbled in Jeff’s throat but for the first time Kurt didn’t find it threatening. It wasn’t directed at him, he thought it had more to do with the smaller wolfs general upset, and he was upset, every line of his body stiff with tension and his hair raised as his thoughts raced into Kurt’s mind, hot and angry.

_“You don’t know what it’s like loving someone you can’t touch, wanting them and always being separate from them… knowing that no matter how hard you wish there isn’t going to be another, hating yourself because despite it all, you don’t. You don’t want anyone or anything else.”_

Kurt didn’t know what that felt like, but he was beginning to suspect that Jeff did. He felt suddenly and profoundly sorry for the boy. He was so young. At his age Kurt had been aching for a chance at first love, for a chance at a real life and Jeff sounded so resigned to a half existence. What must it be like for these people, to fall in love with such intensity, just the once, to have everything riding on your connection with one person?

There had been a time when Kurt’s father could stare at a wall like it didn’t exist, like nothing at all existed, and he could simply ghost through it, out of this world to wherever Kurt’s mother had gone. It didn’t sound unlike what Blaine had described David was going through… maybe it wasn’t so different at the basics. But generally human beings could drag themselves back; they could stitch themselves up and clear the fog from their eyes and hold on to life. His father had even loved again. The fact that David would eventually die and Jeff talked like he would never love anyone else but this someone out of his reach, was so cruel it could make a heart break. He didn’t want Jeff’s heart to break, or his, or Blaine’s for that matter. He didn’t want any of it.

So he had to be careful, for both their sakes. Blaine would never have told him and he understood why, but he was thankful that Jeff had told him regardless and he said as much. The younger wolf just stared at him in surprise.

_“You’re welcome? I honestly thought… I don’t know, you’d be mad or something. I haven’t exactly been nice to you.”_

_“No you haven’t.”_ Kurt hoped Jeff wasn’t expecting him to disagree. _“But I believe that you care about Blaine, and you didn’t have to tell me this. So thank you, but I’m not leaving.”_ All of his reasons for staying still stood and the memory of his mind going silent, Blaine suddenly glaringly absent from it, was too close. The idea of leaving was unfathomable.

 _“You’re going to regret that,”_ Jeff said, like he knew.

_“Maybe.”_

Maybe they both knew that already.

-*-*-*-

The MacTere’s had been roaming for centuries and along the way they had encountered many strange things and made even stranger enemies. Reviled by pack wolves, with no land to call their own, and hunted by most of the human race the stray clan wolves took shelter where they could and learned not to fall afoul of predators. Humans were not the only threat an unwary wolf could find himself facing off with. He should be so lucky if the only thing he ever had to worry about were humans.

Vampires were their sworn enemy and though most of them were as wizard whipped as the pack wolves these days as enemies of the guild Clan wolves were not protected by its laws, a fact that the vampires often took advantage of, so it was important always to be wary of where they roamed. If there were vampires in the area it was best to stay clear of it, which was how every stray Nick had ever encountered had heard of the one who called himself The Master (M when he let you speak to him). The only thing known about M was that he was a master vampire without a coven, a renegade like the MacTere and thus an enemy of the Wizard’s Guild.

Nick didn't believe in monsters, though he'd been called one more times than most people would be comfortable with, and maybe that was the reason why he scoffed at the idea if them. After the third or fourth time someone screamed monster at him before they met their end the accusation lost its ability to make him wonder. He wasn't a mythical beast or a soulless demon set to prey against mortals. He was as mortal as anyone else with blood that ran red and the wits to still be alive when they were very sadly dead (sad for them anyway). Nick never wasted time being sad about things he couldn't change, which made taking lives so much simpler.

He didn't believe in monsters but M was whispered to be one. Some swore he wasn’t a vampire at all but a freakish ghoul who had been engineered by dark magic and composed of rotting limbs stitched together like Frankenstein's creature. A soulless fiend spit from hell to feast on the living. Rumor of course did not live up to reality, not completely, but even Nick had to admit M was something otherworldly.

The guy gave him the creeps frankly, and everyone knew Vampires were demon spawn anyway and not to be trusted. When they were done with the Wizard’s the MacTere would crush the leeches and be rid of them too, but Sebastian insisted they needed M.

A tall man, he was covered head to toe in black, as he had been the one other time he'd agreed to meet with Sebastian. His jacket was billowing and draping like something out of a Dracula film, and the same nondescript pair of black shades obscured his face. It should have looked ridiculous, would have in fact, if not for the eerily bright smile that did nothing to hide his fangs, jagged and blood stained. That combined with the smell of decaying blood clinging to his skin set every last survival instinct Nick possessed on edge. That wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it came after the first wary sniff, after you choked on the scent of rot and blood and wondered what it was that held your heart in an icy grip, what it was that made you fear down to the deepest part of you. Nick never dug that deep. He didn't want to know what smelled so wrong about M.

Trust Sebastian to get them tangled up with the antichrist.

Nick was not without heart, his clan was everything, and there was nothing of himself he wouldn't give for it. People got in the way and thus they were removed. He owed them no more consideration than a fair battle and a clean death. But he wasn't a sadist, and torture didn't give him any pleasure. Usually. Whenever he thought back to having Jeff tied to his bed he couldn't help but grin. M however thrived on the fear and pain of others and everywhere Nick and his brothers had traveled M had left a scar. Now he had come to Ohio, presumably with the purpose of finding more victims but everyone knew that Westerville was the guild’s holy city (as it were). M never solely hunted humans either; they were too easy and died too quickly. The prey he wanted most was wolves like them, but here they would all simply flee to the protected sanctuary. Here they could rally together and the hunter could become the hunted.

Which was why predators generally avoided this part of Ohio, but M was no ordinary predator. He was absolutely out of his mind, which made him ten times more dangerous. He wanted to destroy Alpha Anderson as much as Sebastian did but nobody fully understood why and when the vampire had first approached them Sebastian had been wary to trust him. What sane wolf trusted a vampire, especially this one?

But M had been the one to warn them about the lands enchantments, M had told them that the only way around them was an invitation, love or blood. Sebastian would either have to have the love of someone tied to the land or Anderson blood, and since he had neither they were in trouble.

"I heard you visited the Anderson house?" M laughed over the sounds of diners in the low lit pub, the same establishment he'd arranged for their last meeting. Nick hated it, hated cities and their confining press of human bodies in general, and as it was currently M's haunting grounds he had to say he hated Columbus most of all.

"Did Blaine show you exactly what he could do to you if you don't play nice in his yard?" M didn't wait for Sebastian's reply, grin widening as he sipped from the straw in his water. "But of course he did. You wouldn't be here if you thought you could beat him without me."

"I can't." Sebastian admitted bitterly, taking a swig of his beer. "But I don't see how you can either. There's no way to get all of us in, not unless we're all as lucky as Nick and some moony protégé decides to play Romeo and Juliet."

M let out a hissing giggle and licked his lips. It was obscene, and so threatening a gesture in nature that just the sight if it in connection with Jeff made Nick's hackles rise. He bared his teeth at the ghoulish vampire, allowing his own canines to grow sharp and heavy in his mouth and Sebastian rolled his eyes.

"Nick's gone and found himself a bitch. While I personally can't see the appeal it has been useful."

"You can get in the house?" M directed his gaze at Nick and he felt it burning even through the shades the vampire wore. It was a moment or two before Nick could answer, his instinct to attack still too strong to do much more than stare the enemy down. They shouldn’t be here, talking to this _thing_. M should be destroyed, of that he was sure.

"Yes,” he finally bit out. “I haven't actually attempted it because I wasn't looking to get caught but I can walk right up to it as long as Jeff's there."

"And you're sure they don't know? If he tells them it will be useless to us," Sebastian asked for the hundredth time and this time Nick was the one to roll his eyes.

Surprisingly M was the one to answer for him. "Oh Jeffie won’t tell. Not when it would put Nick in danger." When Nick scoffed M tsked and wagged a finger at him. "You don't think Blaine wouldn't hunt you? You've already been warned not to trespass and Anderson's don’t warn twice."

Nick admittedly felt uneasy about that. He wasn’t looking to run afoul of Anderson until he was sure he had the advantage. He couldn’t die and leave Jeff alone.

"We've established the kid is hot for him, but he's pack bred. They're insufferably noble about everything. Why would he protect Nick at the expense of his own pack?" Sebastian asked and M let loose a jaunty whistle.

"Because that's what lovers do and Jeffie’s a puppy in love," he answered and then he turned toward Nick and faux whispered, "you've got to get this guy mated. Talk about missing the point."

"But we haven't done anything to them yet. He still thinks he can change Nick, if he thought his precious pack was in immediate danger--"

"He'd have everything to lose by telling the truth." M cut Sebastian off. "Or haven't you figured out yet that it goes both ways? Daddy won’t want poor Jeffie around now that he’s soiled goods. As long as Nick is living Jeff's presence is like an open door, they can’t afford for anything nasty to come walking through it can they? Your little Juliet will be outcast if not killed outright for his betrayal."

Nick stared at the vampire, who was staring right back at him with a fiendish smile and felt his heart drop into his stomach. He couldn’t believe that. Not because it didn’t make sense, because it was downright practical, but because it was Jeff and Jeff was always going on about how much ‘better’ it was too be Pack and how wrong it was to kill things. And his own pack would kill him for submitting to him? For giving in to what was so right between them?

"They'll kill him?" He couldn’t keep the fury out of his voice.

"Well guild law says Blaine could.” M shrugged. “The old alpha would have but Blaine can be awfully sentimental."

Sebastian snorted and clapped a hand on Nick’s shoulder. "So it sounds like you can relax Nick. That puppy has no teeth. He'll boot the kid out and when daddy disowns him Jeff will come running into your arms."

It was meant to be comforting and it should have made him feel better but Nick was still on edge. They weren’t sure and that wasn’t acceptable. He wasn't going to allow anything to happen to Jeff, because Jeff was _his_ and it was only misfortune that he'd been born to the packs and bred to swallow the drivel of the guild and made to heel for wizards. Nick could show him so much more, and he planned to. Something would have to be done.

"He's better off with us anyway," Sebastian was saying. "The packs are nothing but brainwashed lackeys, and when we've destroyed their precious sanctuary the wizards will finally know what it means to fear the name of MacTere."

"Oh you still think you can destroy it? Tell me how you plan to do that?" M asked like he already knew the answer to his question.

"With your help, I want to take your deal." Sebastian said the words Nick had been dreading for months and it was like a bomb went off.

"Then you’ve got to be serious!" M thundered and several of the human patrons stared at them with alarm. M didn’t look at a single one of them. He giggled and said on a childish whisper, "You have to listen to teacher. You can't simply kill a king, not when the land needs him. That’s the curse, the price of the throne, everything goes boom when the throne sits empty."

“Are you saying Anderson can’t be killed?” Nick demanded to know and M shook his head.

“A man can always be killed. But the throne needs a king and the throne is cursed. If he dies naturally without an heir the land will become poison for anyone who has ever touched it or ever will touch it again. And if you kill the last Anderson you better have Anderson blood because if you don’t and you spill it, you and your line will die.”

It was over then. All of Nick’s hope fell. They’d come this far, and fought this long and it was all for nothing. Everyone knew that Blaine was the last of his line, the only reason people thought he hadn’t taken a mate yet and produced a litter of heirs was because he was gay. Now it made sense. What did Blaine really have to worry about? No one would dare take his life if it meant cursing themselves and their own progeny.

“This is bulshit!” Sebastian stood abruptly out of his chair to loom over the table. “You told me you were my only hope at destroying him, putting on this great show, and now you’re telling me that it’s pointless to kill him?!”

“It _is_ pointless your way.” M replied in a bored tone, and when he just tapped his foot impatiently Sebastian slowly sat. “The only way to completely destroy Pack Westerville would be to be rid of the enchantment that surrounds it, but I assure you the wizard responsible for it is far out of both our reaches. So we bring him to us. What you need is a war big enough to bring the great Wizard out of hiding. You think too small Smythe.”

“Get to the part where you tell us how you can help us,” Nick snapped impatiently and M turned his head slowly to stare at him.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he finally said and Sebastian sighed. They both knew what the vampire wanted; though for the life of him Nick hadn’t the faintest idea why. They’d followed his hints and asked the right questions and with a little help from a chatty preteen they were relatively sure they’d found the right person but Nick was loath to hand over anyone, even a pack wolf, to M without understanding the stakes. Nick looked to Sebastian because in the end it was his call and when his Alpha nodded he reached inside his jacket and grabbed the stack of photos he’d stored in the inside pocket. He tossed them on the table and M grabbed them up greedily, almost vibrating with eagerness. Nick watched as the man stroked a pale finger over the woman in the photo, his tongue darting out to slither over his lips every so often as he gazed at her.

“Such a pretty girl,” he crooned under his breath and Nick shivered. “You’re sure it’s her?”

“We had to do a lot of digging to make sure it was the right girl, and getting the photos required some theatrics,” Nick groused, remembering the elaborate scheme Sebastian had concocted to get them. “But it’s her.”

“Good. Very good.” M set the photos down as he waved a server over. “We’re going to play a game Sebastian, the game of thrones, the best game there is. It’s the bloodiest.” The vampire licked his lips again and chuckled under his breath.

“So why is she important?” Sebastian asked what they’d both been wondering since M had given them her name and instructed them to find her. “How is she going to—”

“Shhhhhhush,” M put a finger to his lips and Sebastian jerked back but fell silent. “You’ve never brought a kingdom down. It’s a game of the mind boy, so best leave it to the big thinkers. I’ve got things in motion that you wouldn’t _believe_. You want a ticket, believe me, it’s going to be quite the show.”

At that moment the server, a nervous young woman who looked like she wanted to be doing anything but approaching them, reached their table and without warning M lashed out and grabbed her wrist in a punishing grip. The girl shrieked in alarm and then fell into terrified silence as utter stillness swept through the pub and all eyes turned to the man now looming over her, shades cast aside to reveal the red flames burning in his eyes. Nick felt the blood drain from his face as he stared into those blood red pools. Looking into M’s eyes was like looking into the window of Hell.

The girl trembled violently in M’s grip as he leaned close, dragging in the scent of her terror like the perfume of a blossom.

“Do you want to play a game?” He asked her, and when she shook her head violently he struck across the artery in her neck with wicked claws extended. Blood sprayed across the table as the pub erupted in horrified screams.

_*_*_

Scenting turned out to be a whole lot easier for Kurt than shifting, but he’d already figured that out mostly for himself. Jeff was a good teacher for the most part, always quick to ask questions about what he was smelling and lead him to the correct assumptions about what it meant and how to use it all to his advantage. He was easily distracted however, becoming so engrossed in getting Kurt to a place where he could tell the difference between hour old squirrel scent and half hour (not to mention spotting the difference between them and chipmunk tracks and other things of that nature) that more than twice Kurt had to remind him that they were on a mission.

He didn’t know Jeff but he thought it was a bit odd. Not that a teenager could be easily distracted, but that _this particular teenager_ seemed so reluctant to stay on task. The boy he’d watched fight in the arena had been all focus and intensity. Their frank talk seemed to have killed most of the teen’s animosity toward him but the boy was far from comfortable. He was anxious still and though it had muted some as the trail led them further and further from Annehurst Kurt could still smell fear coming off of him and it was baffling.

He couldn’t assume it was _him_ Jeff was afraid of anymore, if that had ever been a part of it in the first place, but something definitely had him scared and Kurt had to think it had something to do with the vandals. Did Jeff know something he wasn’t telling? He wondered, and almost discounted the thought out of hand. Why would Jeff protect someone who had done this to one of his pack mates? It wasn’t like he had any great love for humans.

Kurt followed the trail through another yard, careful to move swiftly and keep low like Jeff had instructed. The key was to pass quickly so that any human looking out a window wouldn’t have enough time to worry about why they were there, or get stupid with fear, and have plenty of time to convince themselves it was probably just a stray dog they’d seen. The scent was changing; the Axe the culprits had been wearing would have faded just the slightest bit with time and the perspiration of a run, and Kurt was sure he was detecting new undertones to the scent trail, something that itched at his brain with familiarity but he couldn’t for the life of him put his finger on what was familiar about it.

The second thing that was odd was the weird tracks they’d encountered every hundred feet or so. Never any sort of foot print, but always an odd clump of pulled up grass, like the culprit had been dragging something against the ground and it occasionally got caught good enough to pull up dirt.

He was so single minded in his task that he didn’t realize Jeff was no longer keeping step with him until the younger wolf had veered to the right, stopped and barked for his attention. Kurt looked up, momentarily out of sorts and when he found Jeff again the teen told him to keep up and trotted off in the wrong direction. Kurt barked and Jeff stopped to look back at him.

_“No, that’s the wrong way. The scent’s fading but it’s still there. It goes—”_

_“Deeper into town, Kurt, we’ll be down town soon and it’ll cause trouble if we go sniffing around like this in a populated area. It’s time to go back. It’s obvious that humans did this.”_ Kurt personally thought no such thing was obvious but he couldn’t argue with the fact that tramping through downtown in broad daylight wasn’t the best idea.

 _“We still don’t know it was humans.”_ He refused to let that score go, even if he had to give up the chase for the day and follow Jeff as he set out towards home again. Kurt got the feeling that if Jeff could have rolled his eyes in his wolf body he would have.

_“Or you just don’t want to believe that people could—”_

_“Jeff, I spent most of my adolescence at the bottom of a dumpster covered in purple slushee. I don’t need any special lessons on how cruel people can be when they want to be.”_

_“Why’d they do that to you?”_ There was curiosity in Jeff’s thoughts to be sure but Kurt heard an underlining indignation as well and he was glad at least that it didn’t appear that they were on their way back to being at each other’s throats.

_“Because I’m gay and that’s different and people hate things they can’t understand. I know it’s not the same as what you’ve been through but—”_

_“But it’s got the same roots,”_ Jeff conceded. _“It’s sick.”_

 _“It is,”_ Kurt agreed. _“And if I thought this was just a bunch of stupid teenagers being cruel I wouldn’t even question it. But something about this is genuinely not adding up.”_ Couldn’t Jeff see it? Or at least _smell_ it? Hell, maybe Jeff couldn’t for all he knew, Blaine had said Jeff was a tracker like him but maybe Kurt’s nose was just better? He scoffed at that thought. Not only was it vain it was just a little too good to be true considering that Jeff could find a scent trail and tell you it belonged to a year old cat who had walked across the yard exactly thirty six minutes prior.

But Jeff didn’t say anything. As far as he was concerned humans were to blame, and that appeared to be that.

-*-*-

He’d only been in Westerville for a full day and it was already hard for Blaine to keep focus with Kurt gone all morning. _‘Where is he? He’s your mate. Need close. Keep close. Protect. Claim. Where is he?’_ seemed to be playing on loop in the back of his head as he talked with pack members, as he met with Harvey at the school, as he dressed for his weekly meeting with the mayor. With Kurt not there his mind turned to replaying every last second of their morning together: the way he’d looked walking into the front hall with Chandler like he belonged there (like he wouldn’t hear of staying behind), the exact tilt to his lips when he’d said he doubted Jedi Knights laid around in bed while their master’s carried on with business, the exact way his own heart thudded every time the words Jedi Knight passed those gorgeous lips and the pretty way Kurt flushed when he was embarrassed, like when Adam…

Blaine quickly diverted his thoughts to something else. Adam was after all an exceedingly loyal and all around decent guy, and yes, Blaine had noticed all of Kurt’s blushes and smiles whenever he was around the other male, and no, he wasn’t thrilled (he was downright murderous) but there was no pretending like he hadn’t promised Kurt he could have choices, including the choice to mate elsewhere should he desire. Those stupid stupid words had come out of his lips because he knew Kurt needed to hear them and he couldn’t _not_ say them and want them to be true, the same way he couldn’t not want Kurt to want nothing but him now and forever no matter how selfish it was.

He’d said Kurt could choose. He had meant it and he would not go back on his word. Adam was a good man, a great hunter, a much needed and appreciated presence in the guard. Any lycan should be so lucky to catch such a promising mate. Kurt could do far worse and if that was his choice Blaine would accept that with grace and—

“Blaine?”

“Back off?!” Blaine whirled around to snarl and Adam jumped back in alarm, body instantly coiled and at the ready for attack. The Mayor’s security detail had their hands on their guns, watching him with unease and Judith, the Mayor’s personal secretary, had stilled with her hand holding the open elevator and was watching them with the worried frown of a woman out of her depth but sure whatever happened she was going to be left to clean up the mess. Blaine felt his cheeks go scarlet and he could have kicked himself. Christ had he actually done that?

“We’re ready to go up now Alpha,” Wes gestured to the open elevator and Blaine could hear it in his voice the, ‘yes, you just did that and yes I am laughing at your pain’.

“I was only trying to get your attention. I meant no disrespect,” Adam apologized with a confused glance between the two of them and Blaine grimaced. The man didn’t deserve to have Blaine snapping at him every time his scent caught Blaine off guard. Hadn’t he just been going over all the reasons he couldn’t kill him?

“I know you didn’t. I’m sorry, my mind was elsewhere.” He apologized to him with a touch on the arm, meaning it (mostly). And it was because of that part, that tiny part that kept going on about how Kurt was _his, his, his his hishishis,_ that Blaine thought, _“You and I should talk later… alpha to alpha, about Kurt. I won’t hold it against you if you don’t treat me like your Alpha. In fact I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”_

_“But you are my Alpha. Blaine I’d never—”_

_“And that’s the problem. You’d never even consider it even if you wanted it, even if he wanted it, because I’m your Alpha and that’s not... good. So let’s talk. I think it’ll do us both good.”_

So Blaine talked to the Mayor about the men they’d killed for hunting in their forest and the Mayor looked at him like he was disgusting even as he sweat with fear. And then they talked about “keeping the peace” and making sure _Blaine’s people_ didn’t interfere too much with that peace and when Blaine told him about the vandals, Mayor George just hummed and hawed about kids being kids and something about tightening the curfew until finally Blaine warned him that the next time he caught that kind of kid in Annehurst they’d be punished by lycan law the lycan way, borders be damned so help him.

“Now listen here son!” Mayor George slammed his hands on his desk, his balding head flushing red as he yelled across the table. “We put up with you monsters because the government lets you have your little reservation out in the woods but Annehurst is public property and I’ll be damned if I let some kid walk into my office and start threatening the people of _my_ town!”

“You seem confused about just who you’re dealing with. Now, I’m only going to say this once so I suggest you listen up!” Blaine stood and let his voice carry to the others just outside the door, to Wes, Adam, the security detail and Judith who were sure to be listening in. He let it resonate with control and dominance and watched Mayor George shrink in his chair. “I’m not human, not some boy you can frighten into obedience while your kind picks us off at your leisure. If they come to do harm they’ll pay for it, end of story. My job is to protect my people and yours is to protect yours. If I were you I’d start by teaching them more about tolerance, because I promise you, if they want a fight they’ll get it.”

Mayor George swallowed hard but nodded and said nothing more. Blaine had said all he’d come to say so he swept from the room in a black cloud of anger and Adam and Wes fell in quickly behind him. Wes waited till they were outside the office building and out of human earshot to comment.

“Mayor George may be too much of a coward to say it to your face but he’s a hard man, with no great love for us.”

“And now he’ll strike in other ways. I know. But what did you want me to say Wes?” Blaine demanded to know as they strode down the street, passerby giving them a wide berth. Blaine had no idea if they knew his face on sight after years of weekly meetings with the mayor but it was more likely his bad mood that had them scurrying. “I meant what I said, what happened to Lina could have been ten times worse. We’re stretching the guard thin as it is patrolling both the woods and our houses; this is the third time vandals have slipped through. What if they had set fire to the place with her and Benito inside? We both know that man doesn’t give a damn what happens in Annehurst.”

“If we start killing people in town they’re going to come after us,” Adam pointed out. “The Mayor can’t kick us out of the woods, but Annehurst is technically their land.”

“They can send their police after us if they like,” Wes scoffed. “What we need to worry about is The Guild. If the council takes George’s side it will end badly for the whole pack. You can’t afford another strike against you Blaine.”

“We don’t have many choices you guys,” Blaine sighed as the van came into sight. “It’s either keep on as we are until someone dies or stand our ground and make people think twice before they try and hurt us. I’m not saying we simply gobble up any human who steps foot in Annehurst. But Article 13 of the Rules of Engagement states that any subhuman can act in self-defense or defense of their families and property to the fullest of their ability in response to a threat. The Guild will side with us so long as we adhere to that. Human laws often grant them the right to shoot a trespasser on their own property. This isn’t any different.”

“It’s different because we’re monsters,” Adam said what they all knew because it needed saying. “Some wailing woman on the six o’clock news going on about her son being murdered by werewolves turns a dangerous thug into a national martyr. Things will get ugly and they’ll get ugly fast.”

Blaine knew that. He faced the reality every day that at any time public opinion of them could turn; tolerance could be replaced by enmity and rebellion against subhuman friendly laws. It was down to him as Alpha to always be prepared for it, to hope for the best and cultivate good will between the pack and their human neighbors, but never would he make that his priority at the pack’s expense. He wasn’t counting on the good will of others and fortune to keep them safe. Nothing would be left to chance.

“Well let’s hope then that we don’t have to kill anyone,” Blaine said as he opened the driver’s side door and climbed in. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was time to forget George for the moment. “How are the kids?”

“Jeff checked in with me a while ago. He and Kurt are headed up to the school,” Wes answered as he dug around for the smartphone he kept in the glove compartment. It was there for a hand held itinerary more than communication. If at any time they needed to contact someone Blaine had a direct connection to them. As long as they were in range he could speak to them mind to mind. The same was true of the others to a lesser degree. Their range was far more limited and they had to have actually met the person they intended to link minds with. Blaine as the Alpha was instantly linked to every life born or sworn to the pack.

Blaine couldn’t help the relief he felt hearing that Kurt was on his way back to their territory (where Blaine could keep him safe from harm) and he itched to start the car and speed back to the school but he took deep even breaths and kept himself in check. He looked to Adam and the blonds lips quirked in a fond smile as he relayed the information that Chandler had finished his own assignment (accompanying a pair of wolves from the outer guard on patrol duty on the east end of the wood) and had already reported to Allie at the school for den hour.

“He’s thrilled. They’re learning about estrous today.”

-*-*-

Kurt’s first view of Dalton Academy was when he and Jeff trotted onto the grounds early that afternoon sweaty from a day of walking in heavy coats and panting for water. It was a campus comprised mostly of gothic stone structures, complete with steeple rooftops and archways, and absolutely teaming with life. His nose was instantly overwhelmed with the scents of hundreds of bodies in one place. His eyes were drawn quickly to the lawn between a pair of stone houses where a group full of small children was gathered in a circle around tall woman in a familiar uniform. It was the same Navy blue that the omega’s at the house wore with the same red piping. The children were all in uniform too, grey skirts for the girls with loose white blouses and grey shorts and white shirts for the boys. They fit right in with the fancy private school image except for the fact that they were all barefoot and one little boy was gnawing on another little girls ear.

 _“Where are we going?”_ Kurt asked as he followed Jeff across the lawn and toward the stone steps in front of a long square building that had the look of a barracks to it. He couldn’t help but start at each new sound and stare at the little clusters of children he was now spotting all over the grounds.

 _“Den hour. At eleven o’clock every morning all protégés have it with Allie before lunch,”_ Jeff replied as he bounded up the steps. Kurt watched him shift back onto two legs, envious of how effortless he made it seem. He stepped toward the door and then paused when he realized Kurt wasn’t following. “You coming Hummel?”

 _“I don’t know if I can shift back,”_ he admitted, pacing at the bottom of the steps, ashamed of having to confess it at all and that he was still dreading it so much. It had been better with Blaine there to help this morning but Blaine wasn’t here and what if it hurt like the first time again?

“Sure you can.” Jeff strode down the steps with purpose and Kurt’s muscles tightened as the blonde reached for him. All Jeff did however was stroke his hand up Kurt’s spine, against the natural fall of his fur and needle pinpricks shot up and down his back in an annoyingly discomforting fashion. His body wriggled out from under Jeff’s hand almost of its own accord and without thinking about it at all his flesh began shifting and melting.

It was only after he realized it was happening and the initial shock wore off that his heart began to race in his chest and the shift began to ache and sting, but by then it was mostly done and a second later he was lying in the grass naked as the day he was born with his ass to the sky.

“What did you just do?” He asked, his voice growly with disuse.

“It’s a trick we use with the cubs. Being stroked like that feels really uncomfortable, like hitting your funny bone with a hammer, and the surprise of it is often enough to make them spontaneously start changing their shape.” Jeff explained. “Obviously once they have more control it doesn’t work but for the really young ones it’s useful.”

Kurt nodded, remembering again that he’d seen Lina do the same with Benito that morning.

“Well howdy hey!” A cheerful voice hollered from above and Kurt sat up to find that the doors were now open and Chandler was standing at the top of the steps grinning down at them both. “No one told me this was a naked party. Look at me, I’m overdressed.”

Kurt noticed he was indeed dressed, and differently from that morning. He was now in the grey shorts and white uniform shirt that he was beginning to think all the students there wore, the only difference was that Chandler was sporting a navy colored silk collar around his neck. There was a name engraved in gold on the front and Kurt gaped at it in shock. Noticing his stare the teenager preened.

“Do you like it? It says Adam.”

“He can read Chandler,” Jeff laughed at him. He offered Kurt a hand and helped him to his feet as he explained. “Don’t look so shocked. All A level students and protégés have to wear them but only to formal events and lessons. It’s more symbolic than anything else.”

“We wear them because although our bodies are fully mature we recognize our need for guidance and willingly place ourselves under the authority of our teachers,” Chandler added helpfully. “The A level students—there are three levels that is, O, B, and A, and they’re divided by age— anyway they have blank red collars and when they graduate to protégé their alpha-master will gift them with a special one like this.” Chandler gestured proudly to his collar and Jeff rolled his eyes.

“This building is Spelding Hall, Kurt,” he gestured to the plaque beside the door before waving them Kurt and Chandler inside. “It’s all dormitories for A level’s and protégés. Protégés have rooms on the first floor so we don’t wake the others up, coming in and out at odd hours.”

There was a well-kept (not to mention well used) lounge area in the front and a narrow hallway with evenly spaced doors on either side stretching down to what looked like a staircase leading up, beside a back door. “Down at the end of hall opposite the stairs is the bath and towel room where the domestics put extra uniforms. Chandler can take you to find something that fits. I’m going to go get dressed in my room. We’ve got to hurry because Allie will literally chew on your backside if you’re late without an excuse.”

Jeff disappeared inside a door on the right side of the hall and left Kurt to follow Chandler. He was dubious about the success of finding something in the student’s uniform closet that would both fit and not make him look completely ridiculous (god he had never missed his clothes so much) but Chandler attacked that task like he did everything else, with endless enthusiasm.


	13. Estrous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are certain things that can turn a man's world on its head: turning into a werewolf, having to decide whether or not they're going to shack up with a pack Alpha, estrous...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes the discussion of non-con as well as Mpreg that may be triggers for some readers, and the tags will reflect the introduction of Mpreg to this story. Please message me with questions about specifics, I will gladly give you more details. 
> 
> Disclaimer: The attitudes regarding consent depicted in this story are meant only to stand up in fiction and to represent the problematic social constructs in an imperfect people group. I want to give a special thanks to those folks who participated in the Tumblr survey. 
> 
> If I do one thing with this story I'd like to challenge the things supernatural AUs (though we love them) typically take for granted. Like a previously human male suddenly discovering he can have babies. Apparently it's a big deal? Maybe, just maybe the human male in question would be as squiked by it as you or I? And as you know if you've been reading, that's sort of a problem for Blaine. A big one, and to see what happens I suppose you'll just have to see it through to the end. That's all I'm going to say. :) It is my hope, as always, that this story entertains and does well for you. So if you're still with me, enjoy the rest of the ride.

Allie didn’t usually let tardiness slide when she was giving a lesson, but there were few sights as pitiful (or as amusing) as a grown man in a white polo a size too small and a pair of boy shorts being led reluctantly into the room by an excitable teenager who made no qualms about eying him up. She let it slide this time, gesturing for the two to enter quietly as Chandler led Kurt into the semi-circle of adolescents sitting around her. Several of them snickered at the sight of him and though Kurt kept his composure Allie could see the pink at the top of his ears. She’d have to talk to Blaine about getting the poor man some clothes. He wasn’t a student officially so there was no need for him to wear the uniform for heaven’s sake.

She glared disapprovingly at Sugar who was whispering something to Kitty and giggling as she pointed across the circle at Kurt’s bare legs. And he did have quite a bit of it on display, Allie mused to herself, those shorts really weren’t his size at all and they didn’t leave much at all to the imagination. Chandler’s smug little grin led her to believe he was just fine with Kurt’s current shortage of appropriate clothes. 

“Now that everyone is here,” she made sure Chandler felt her reproachful gaze and didn’t continue on until the teen looked sufficiently cowed. “I want to reintroduce Kurt. Many of you met Mr. Hummel last night but for those of you who didn’t, he will be training with you until such time as Blaine decides he is no longer in need of it.”

“Did you really keep Blaine locked up in a cage?” Kitty asked, tossing her blond ponytail over her shoulder. “Blaine must have felt so awful. No wonder he bit you, because if you’d done that to me, I wouldn’t just bite you human, I’d have killed you.”

Allie had been afraid after Kurt’s reveal the night before that this would happen. She felt badly for Kurt, who had so unwittingly put his foot in it, but she knew that Kurt would never get anywhere in the pack if he didn’t meet these challenges. Her whole life was raising these pups into functioning adults so she better than anyone knew how eager they were to get a good seat in the pack ranking. Rank was everything and it was better for the community as a whole if the cubs worked it out when they were young under the watchful gazes of their elders who could prevent unnecessary deaths from occurring.

Kurt was a stranger who their alpha was courting. He had once been their enemy and now here he sat amongst them with the potential to be placed above them all at any moment. Kitty wouldn’t be the only one to challenge him (not by a long shot). She thought of Headmaster Strand and couldn’t help but think a prissy teenager was the least of the poor man’s worries.

“First,” Kurt answered with a patience that Allie envied and an undertone of firmness that she found even more gratifying, “Blaine didn’t bite me. Secondly, I didn’t keep him in a cage and thirdly what I did or didn’t do with him is none of your business; and if Blaine had a problem with any of it he would come to me and we would talk about it. I really don’t think he needs a fourteen –year-old to be the judge of what he does or doesn’t feel, now do you?”

“I’m seventeen!” Kitty corrected him through clenched teeth and Allie had to repress a grin when Kurt smiled at the girl with all the acidity of a lemon.

“Oh good Seventeen, old enough know that Blaine can judge his own experiences. So since he hasn’t, come to me with a complaint that is, your anger is a little misdirected, as are your priorities. Taking someone’s life because they unwittingly were a part of making yours less enjoyable is pointless cruelty… but I’m sure you just hadn’t thought it through yet.”

There was heavy silence for a beat and then Chandler made a thoughtful sound and declared, “no. Kitty’s pretty much always a bitch.” Kitty exploded to her feet, sending her chair flying and the noise level instantly sky rocketing. Allie just hoped there wouldn’t be blood before she could separate them.

“Say that again Kheil I—”

A sharp whistle had Allie’s ears throbbing and she wasn’t the only one to instinctively stuff them. Mercifully however Kitty stopped in her tracks and the room fell silent. Kurt withdrew his fingers from his mouth as Joe rubbed comically at his ear and grumbled, “Ouch man, some of us are sensitive.”

“Knock it off, okay!” Kurt barked, staring into Kitty without so much as blinking and not dropping the girls gaze until she’d looked away. “Now that’s quite enough. I don’t know or care what you’re used to, but we’re here for a lesson and I think we’ve wasted enough of your teacher’s time. You’re not going to go beating each other up like a bunch of Neanderthals. It’s ridiculous!” He glared at them each in turn and snapped, “Am I clear?”

Allie saw them each looking to the other, wondering if one of them would be brave enough to challenge him. This she knew was the deciding moment for the protégés. They could hate him because of his human origins but they couldn’t disrespect him if they weren’t willing to stand up to him when he threw down the gauntlet. Whether Kurt knew it or not he’d set himself up as the dominant amongst them and if any of them had anything to say about it, it was speak now or shut up. She wasn’t worried how it would go, stranger and formerly human or not Kurt was still an adult and that alone would make many of them hesitate to put their money where their mouths were.

When nobody spoke Allie cleared her throat.

“Sit down Kitty, we’ve got a lot to cover today.” When the girl was sitting she turned to the chalkboard and wrote the word Estrous in large letters. “Who can tell me what this is? Trent?” She prompted ignoring Chandlers flailing arm.

“It’s the breeding cycle,” the round faced boy answered, ignoring Chandlers put out pout.

“Very good,” and because it was better to head him off at the pass she instructed Chandler to tell them all the difference between it and moon heats.

“Well a moon heat is a temporary side effect of the moon spiking everyone’s hormones. It builds up as the moon is waxing so for days you’re like ‘all I want is for someone to tie me up right now’ but you’re still sort of okay. But then on the full moon it’s like totally on. It makes for an awesome night and the best part is nobody can get pregnant… unless the full moon just happens to fall during their breeding cycle.”

 _“Oh my god this is a sex ed class! I’d have just let them beat each other up if I’d have known I had to sit in on a sex class!”_ Allie blinked at the sudden sound of Kurt’s thoughts in her head and it was Jeff’s loud snort and Sugar’s giggle into her hands that alerted Kurt to the fact that he’d let the thought slip out to them all. He flushed a bright pink and Allie grinned at him.

“It’s more than just about sex Kurt, we cover all aspects of den life from courtship to rearing the cubs,” she informed him. She hoeed he paid attention. Blaine had chosen Kurt for his mate and few people were privy to just how far gone he was. Allie doubted Blaine would tell Kurt how he would suffer if Kurt chose to leave and he’d forbidden her and Wes to do so. He was insisting on giving Kurt a choice. While she respected the boy’s reasons for humoring Kurt’s more human needs there was far more at stake here than Kurt realized and while she agreed it wasn’t fair to heap so much responsibility on Kurt’s shoulders, frankly life wasn’t always fair. Blaine was the alpha, he needed heirs and he could not produce them if his heart was all wrapped up in someone he couldn’t reach. If Blaine died before he had children many more people would die. This was her pack and she’d protect it. Kurt was going to be Blaine’s mate and he needed to be properly groomed for it so she’d see to it, subtly of course.

“So yesterday we finished talking about courtship. Now you and your very lucky mates are mated, properly bit and bonded, but you’re not quite ready for that first liter. Who can tell me the best birth control method?”

That got her a bunch of confused blinks.

“I thought human contraception didn’t work on us,” Jeff was brave enough to say and Allie nodded encouragingly.

“Very good Jeffery; their pills are not compatible with our body chemistry and carrying around condoms is difficult when you only wear clothes twenty percent of the time.”

“Not to mention they break like nobody’s business,” Rory mumbled and Chandler gave him a considering look. Allie made a mental note to question the teen later. It was far from unusual for the protégés to engage in sexual intercourse, but it was important to guide them through their first courtships so that they learned to respect themselves and their potential mates.

“You’re probably not buying the right size. Humans have significantly smaller genitalia,” Joe leaned across Trent to whisper helpfully and Allie watched Kurt’s eyes widen with something comically close to mortification and shift uncomfortably in his seat out of the corner of her eye.

She heard Chandler whispering to Kurt that he needn’t worry about his package being typically puny like most humans, as Rory gaped at Joe and sputtered, “They come in sizes?” To which Joe nodded his head sagely in reply.

“Wait a minute… don’t any of you watch television?” Kurt interjected. When the others only blinked at him in confusion he faltered a bit, looking to Allie for help. “It’s just that most kids your age know by now how condoms work even if they’ve never had to use them. They pick things up in the media.”

“There are no televisions in the dorms Kurt,” Trent ventured to explain. “Those of us with family living in Annhurst can go home on the weekend and catch a program every now and again I guess, but Rory’s from Ireland, and to be honest there’s nothing on TV worth catching.”

“Yeah the only shows that talk about Lycans are either political or they need some big bad wolf for some gun toting Hunter to slay,” Sugar complained and the others grumbled in agreement.

“Oh.” It was all Kurt said and Allie continued to watch him carefully; taking advantage of what she knew would be one of few opportunities to really observe the man Blaine had chosen for a partner. He looked startled by what he’d heard and then sad, and it was the sympathy she saw pass so quickly in his eyes that gave her hope.

“So Rory, since you’ve discovered first hand that contraception is difficult for us,” Allie got the conversation back on track. She flashed the shy teenager an encouraging wink when he flushed at her words. “Can you tell me what _is_ the most effective way to avoid an unplanned pregnancy?”

“Abstinence?” He guessed and Allie nodded. She turned to the board again and began to write as she lectured. “A lycan, be they male or female, is only fertile during estrous. So it is important to know the signs of an oncoming breeding heat if you want to avoid—”

Kurt made a sound like he’d sucked in a fly and Allie turned to find the man hanging half out of his seat like he’d caught himself from falling over.

“Excuse me what?” He was gaping at her, staring like she’d grown a second head. Allie wracked her brains. Had she said something wrong?

“Is there a problem dear?” She was coming up dry. She couldn’t think up a reason why Kurt would have such a problem with abstaining from sex every four months. It was only for a short period of time, and only when he and Blaine weren’t interested in breeding.

Kurt’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, like he suspected a trick and asked her slowly if she would repeat what she’d just said.

“I said we’re only fertile during—”

“We, who is we?” Kurt cut her off to demand, “we as in lycan females?”

Oh. Allie thought she was beginning to understand what had Kurt acting so strangely. She had no idea how much humans knew or understood about lycan biology, the only human being she’d ever interacted with more than once was Quinn and being their resident doctor and having the exclusive privilege to treat them, she probably knew more about their biology than any human alive. It was possible the average human simply didn’t know how lycan bodies could make it possible for both their sexes to breed. She’d never taken a course on human biology but she knew enough to know for sure that their males weren’t capable of giving birth.

“Yes,” she answered gently and for a moment Kurt looked relieved but the blood drained from his face when she added, “and our men.”

Kurt sat still and silent and didn’t say a word. They all stared at him, waiting to see what he would do and Jeff slowly sat up, as if he were preparing to jump up at the slightest provocation, but Kurt just sat there staring at her; until he swayed.

She thought he was going to faint. Chandler must have thought so too because he reached to grab ahold of Kurt’s arm just as the man swayed forward. Kurt didn’t faint and he didn’t fall, but he did drop his head down and take deep breaths to prevent it from happening.

‘Is he okay?’ Sugar mouthed and the others shrugged. Allie tossed them a quelling glance and quickly stepped to Kurt’s side, laying a soothing hand on his back.

“Just breathe love. There’s a good boy.” Kurt slowly sat up, still a little too pale for her liking but no longer in danger of passing out.

“H-how?” He barely managed to get out. Then he just shook his head hard, as if to shake off water. “No. No! You’re kidding or you’re crazy, maybe both for all I care but men can’t have babies!”

“I don’t know many humans I’m afraid so I may be wrong, but their men don’t? They’re born with a body lacking the right equipment, yes?” She kept rubbing his back as she asked her questions, years of dealing with hysterical cubs under her belt making the gesture come second nature.

“Exactly,” Kurt almost looked relieved as he agreed, as if hearing her say the words meant she was wrong about the _other_ side of thing. “We can’t have babies because we don’t have the right parts.”

“Yes, and human bodies don’t change,” she lead him along, grinning a bit as she allowed that it was for the most part. “They grow and they age but usually whatever parts they are born with they don’t typically change at will.” Kurt nodded again but slower this time and Allie could practically see the pieces coming together in his head. She knew the moment it finally clicked.

“But you can.” He said it as a statement of fact, a statement of the obvious because their bodies rearranging was a basic element of their lives. And if a body could go from man to wolf, why should it not be capable of preparing itself for birth?

“Yes,” she confirmed his thoughts. “For lack of a better descriptor lycans are androgynous. Our females are born with all the parts, as you call them, in place and our males, like the human men they mirror, without. But…” she gave him one last pat on the back and moved back to the chalk board. “Given the right trigger our bodies can and will naturally prepare for birth in whatever manner our instincts demand. Who can tell me what triggers estrous in males?”

“Hormones,” they answered in unison behind her and she wrote the word on the board.

“Sexually mature dominants and submissives produce different hormones,” she recited for their memories and Kurt’s benefit. “The hormones that submissives naturally produce are many of the same that are found in estrous, as are many of the pheromones they excrete. Submissive instinct and estrous are tied together. It’s why alpha females have shorter breeding cycles and can go years between heats. Sugar and Kitty, you’ll find it more difficult to conceive when you start thinking about having your first litters. If your mates are omega males they will have a significantly easier time carrying.”

“What about us betas?” Trent asked and before she could even open her mouth to answer Chandler was beaming and waving his hand in the air, begging to be called on. With a fond sigh she gestured for him to take the floor.

“It depends on how submissive we are. Everyone knows we can swing both ways, so if you’re super dominant you’re not going to go into breading heat every six weeks like an omega, but then again if you are you can totally get your heat on with the best of them.”

“Chandler mentioned something important there,” Allie called their attention back to the board as she wrote. “On average there is a six week period between the breeding heats of omega males and females. A good way to avoid expecting when you’re not expecting it is to keep a calendar with your mate. Now Alpha’s are just as physically capable of going into heat as any of us. Left to themselves most alphas never experience estrous, but a high exposure to submissive hormones can cause the body to naturally sync to those around them and spark a spontaneous heat. This is however extremely rare and more common in submissives . A dominant personality exposed to submissive pheromones will more likely be driven to dominate and breed the lycan in heat than to slide into a heat of their own.

“Betas are a bit more complicated, as Chandler already so helpfully pointed out to us. A beta’s submissive instinct depends largely on the beta. Wesley for instance, displays a high level of natural dominance. This is very good, as Beta-Major his position requires him to be able to dominate in subordinates and rise to the challenges that our Alpha faces.” Allie paused, glancing back at Kurt to find that the man was staring at the board almost sightlessly. She frowned, not sure if she liked his slightly glazed expression. All of what she was saying was so important for him to understand.

“Now if Wes mates with an alpha that could potentially become a difficulty. His alpha would need to be someone who is skilled at bringing out his more submissive instincts. If Wes is not producing enough of the right hormones his body will not prepare itself for breeding. In that case we would encourage him to attend to another lycan in heat, in the hopes that his body would sync to theirs.”

“But that’s not going to be a problem because Wes is totally going to claim Emma and she’s an omega,” Sugar gushed and Allie smiled at her. Emma was a favorite with the students, with everybody really. A kinder woman didn’t exist.

“Perhaps,” she allowed. “But let’s return to avoiding pregnancy while you are all unbounded. I’m not going to even suggest that all of you are waiting to find your mates before engaging in intercourse. So it’s the full moon, you’ve both got an itch to scratch. How can you tell if your partner is breeding or not?”

“Hot flashes, sweats, cramping and most noticeably in males a change in genitalia,” Jeff listed off with the air of boredom.

“Before her heat starts my mom eats a ton,” Joe offered tentatively as Allie turned to add _Increased Appetite_ to the list Jeff had started.

“Joseph is right. Anytime the body undergoes a major change it exerts extra energy, requiring extra sustenance. Many submissives will instinctively increase their food intake to prepare for their cycle. Dominants tend to respond to this naturally with food offerings.” Allie grinned as she remembered all the couples she’d seen go through their first heats. “I’ve seen many omegas realize they’re about to go into heat by the way their alphas keep foisting food on them. Also, take note of any unusual moods in your partners. Extra clinginess or uncharacteristic neediness is often a side effect of a rise in submissive hormones.”

“Also, people in heat smell,” Trent announced to the group at large. “My neighbor was nearing a heat once when I was at home and he smelled fantastic… I mean I’m not gay, but it just smelled really nice.” The others snickered at that but Allie just gave the pink cheeked boy an affirming nod.

“Submissive pheromones are not gender specific. They are equal opportunists,” she reminded them all. “Which is the reason why single lycans in heat are always locked in a secure room. The pheromones released during estrous can send alphas into a heat frenzy, their instinct to claim and breed a ready submissive overriding such preferences as sexuality and gender. A submissive caught alone in estrous can easily find themselves bonded to an alpha unwillingly or hurt, which brings me to an important point.” Allie lowered her chalk and turned to face all of her young charges, looking each of them in the eye to stress the importance of her words. “Never fight with an alpha in mating heat. I know a forced bond is a terrible thing to consider, a terrible thing to endure, but it is always better to live to fight another day. There is always hope to be found in the world but one has to be alive to find it. Do you understand?” 

She waited, and one by one they nodded solemnly. Allie prayed as she always did that they would take the lesson to heat, that none of them would ever grow careless and have to face such a nightmare. It was a harsh reality of their biology but there was no known way to suppress the intensity of estrous pheromones; perhaps one day when humans did not fear them so, when their scientist could be trusted with their bodies for research, but until then they had to use the tools they had.

“What’s the matter with you people?” Kurt’s voice was thin but hard and Allie looked to him to find the man’s blue-grey gaze boring into hers with an anger she’d not yet seen in them. “How can you excuse something like that? Pheromones my ass! How can you look these children in the eye and spout that garbage! ” His voice cracked, thin and high and he was forced to swallow before he could continue. “How can you tell them that it’s their job to bar the door so some asshole doesn’t violate them and if they just happen to have shit luck, their only option is to just lay there and hope for better?!”

“Because, it’s the truth,” Allie answered with finality. It was the truth of who they were. They were creatures of instinct at their base and their rules had always been and probably always would be a bit more primitive than humans were comfortable with. Allie could not say she understood what it must be like for this human male to adapt to their world, but she was a nurturer, a mother a hundred times over, and she knew the greatest threat against the charges in her care did not come from Hunters guns or enemy teeth but from ignorance and carelessness. Hard truths weren’t easy to swallow but they would protect her cubs from harm, so she delivered them as gently as she could. She could only give Kurt the same.

-*-*-

It was strange to think that behind all of the smiling faces surrounding him, behind the idyllic looking neighborhood and the charming picture of a community coming together to aide one of their own, there were these monsters. He kept the thought to himself, not wanting to have to defend it or risk offending anyone else with it, but he could not help but think it just the same. He was at odds with himself, conflicted; the image of peace and prosperity surrounding him clashing harshly with his knowledge of the ugliness that each of them was capable of. Kurt had been quiet since den hour that morning, following Chandler and the others around in something of a daze until the sun had begun to descend and Jeff announced that they were being hailed to report into town for the pack-wide project of restoring Lina’s home.

Annehurst was thrumming with energy that night and indeed it seemed like the entire pack had stopped their lives to gather at Lina’s and see about setting the woman’s home to rights. Someone two houses down (the Peterson’s Chandler informed him) had set up enough tables in their yard for a fourth of July picnic and more and more people showed up to add to the stock. A couple of the alphas had organized a huge bonfire in the back of the Peterson’s yard to ‘get the game cooking’ and Kurt had shaken his head rather stupefied when Adam had come by earlier and asked him if he’d like to be part of the hunting party he was rustling up. Instead Kurt let Lina pull him and a couple of others into the task of repainting the front of the house.

No, today was not the day he wanted to attempt to hunt like a wolf. Kurt was sure now more than ever that he didn’t want to be lycan at all after what he’d heard that morning. What he wanted most was to pack his bags (metaphorically speaking since he had no actual bags here to speak of) and wash his hands of the whole thing. He didn’t want to be lycan if it meant that he was capable of the kind of violence he’d visited on that vampire woman, someone whose death he’d nearly caused for no reason other than he was lycan now and had _instincts_. He did not want instincts that meant he’d force himself on someone unwilling just because he was horny, and it terrified him to know that he had a body that could give someone the green light even if his mouth was screaming no and that someone out there could take him without his consent. And not just his body but his life, he could be bonded to someone who hated him, someone who wasn’t even gay for god’s sake, for the rest of his life and his body could change against his will and some stranger could impregnate him…

Thinking about it all made him too light headed. He’d never wanted to run away so badly in his life. The problem remained that he had no idea where to run to, and now the prospect of running into an alpha was doubly horrifying. He couldn’t even convince himself that he wouldn’t, remembering too vividly that night at Full Moon and even before then meeting Sam and that _other_ guy, the one who had smelled him from across the street and stalked him to the bathroom. Kurt shivered. How vulnerable had he been that day? How close to harm had he been and what would have happened if not for Sam?

He frowned remembering the night of the fool moon, after the club and after he’d attacked that woman, how Blaine had called to him and he had answered. He’d been so lost to his wolf that night, so eager to be taken and Blaine’s body over his had been so _perfect_ , he’d outright begged for Blaine to claim him. To have no control over himself, to throw all of his hopes and desires to the wind because some biological instinct told him to mate and to breed was bad enough, but Blaine could have so easily taken him that night and after the fog from the moon heat had disappeared Kurt would have been stuck and every time after that… Would Blaine have continued taking him even if Kurt didn’t want it?

He looked at the clusters of lycans around him, watched the way the omegas moved together, the way the alphas kept a respectful distance and a wary eye out for potential threats and he remembered the look in Allie’s eyes when she’d told them all that the dominant wolves of the pack should always protect the submissives and ward off danger. She’d told them it was their duty to see to the care and wellbeing of their submissives, and that included from harms that outside alphas or they themselves might cause. They punished dominants who abused or mishandled submissives but even Kurt who was almost wholly ignorant of could piece together for himself that punishing an alpha who forced a bond was fairly pointless.

Once it happened it was done. Bonded was bonded and the two involved couldn’t and shouldn’t be separated (another quirk of their oh so helpful biology). It was all about prevention, just don’t let it happen to you or anyone you care about. The obvious answer was yes. Yes if Blaine had bonded with him that night Kurt would have found himself chained to an absolute stranger and taken against his will the next time Blaine’s _instinct’s_ got the better of him. And then one day he could wake up with a vagina, or some other utterly impossibly disturbing thing, and then Blaine could actually get him pregnant and NO!

It made him shake, just to consider it. His whole chest got tight and dots swam before his eyes as he struggled to breathe. Why was it suddenly so hard to breathe?

“Kurt?” At the sound of Lina’s voice Kurt dropped the paintbrush in his hands, only vaguely noting that he’d gotten a white streak of paint on his leg for his trouble, focusing too hard on trying to drag in air instead. “Bend for me piccolo.” The woman instructed as she put a hand to his back and gently guided him to bend so that the blood rushed to his head. Kurt sucked in deep lungful’s of air, blinking back tears of embarrassment as he collected himself. When he felt he was clear headed enough he stood up straight, offering her a weak smile of gratitude that was so pathetic it almost wasn’t worth the effort.

“Thanks,” he offered and she nodded in acknowledgement. He disliked that for the second time that day he’d nearly had some sort of panic attack, and it worried him that fighting off panic attacks was becoming something he did on a daily basis, but her scent was sweet and soothing. It did not escape Kurt’s notice either how she positioned herself in such a way that it blocked his view of the others (and likely their view of him) and for that he was eternally grateful.

“No thanks are required. Come with me, I’ll get you some tea.” For all that everyone kept saying omegas weren’t commanding she didn’t say it like a request and she began walking as if it was a given that he would follow.

She led him through the clusters of painters, scrubbers, and gardeners and into the kitchen through the back door. Kurt could hear the sound of children playing loudly in another part of the house, their youthful laughter mingling with the sound of high energetic barks. He could only assume from yhe noises that some of them weren’t in their human-like forms. Kurt’s eyes wasndered over the homey kitchen as Lina pulled out a chair for him and briskly set about preparing a tea tray. It was a bright space, done in yellows and whites, and if perhaps not the sleek modern styles Kurt preferred in a kitchen it definitely seemed to fit the woman it belonged to. He could imagine both of them set up somewhere in a cottage in the Italian countryside.

She set the tray down in front of him, complete with cookies and a slice of sponge cake, and Kurt tried to tell her she shouldn’t have gone through the trouble but she insisted.

“I want to help. We are pack and all we have is each other. Yes?” Kurt wanted to blurt out that he wasn’t pack and the more he learned about what it meant to be part of a pack the less he wanted anything to do with it, but he thought that it would be rude in the face of the woman’s kindness so he said nothing and sipped carefully from his cup.

He was thankful for the calming brew, for Lina’s silence as she let him drink without forcing conversation on him, for the gentle waves of merriment he felt lapping against his senses from the children in the front of the house. He could admit he’d really needed this, anything not to think about sex. Poor Blaine had better just give up on the idea of them ever having it. Just imagining his body doing those weird things and turning into some sort of freak was making Kurt consider a lifetime of celibacy.

He looked around the kitchen again, this time taking in the details of Lina’s life. Everything had that mismatched and well used quality of hand-me-downs and resale shops but it was clear that Lina had a good sense of design, as everything in the space was well coordinated and if not perfectly matched to everything else in the room it still served to give the place charm. If not for the yipping and other animalistic noises coming from the front he might even have forgotten that he was currently sitting in a she-wolf’s kitchen. It didn’t look any different from any other he’d seen. There were pictures and notes stuck on the fridge like in every home, most of them dedicated to her child.

Kurt stared at a photo of Benito smiling brightly, cake stuck to his face and hair standing on end (something probably taken at his last birthday) and he smiled. The feeling behind that smile did not linger long, as thinking of the boy reminded him of what he’d thought when he’d first smelled him, and given everything he’d learned that day he could not lay his suspicions to rest. He knew on the one hand that it wasn’t fair to think it, that Blaine would be hurt if Kurt ever so much as implied it but… What was he supposed to think? Blaine’s insistence that Benito wasn’t his child rang false when Kurt’s nose kept telling him otherwise. All of the reasons why a person just might happen to smell like they’d been made in the same factory as another (cut from the same cloth he remembered thinking) was hard to swallow when there was a photo on a refrigerator that made him wish his own children would have those same dark wispy curls he remembered all too well what it was like to dig his hands in to.

He frowned. No, no, no, he could not think like that (most definitely not). He would not be having children with Blaine so there was no point even thinking about it, especially considering he had trouble breathing when he did. The point was… the point was he could not help but think Blaine wasn’t telling him the whole truth and it wasn’t as if Blaine didn’t have plenty of reason to lie. Kurt had been told that day that come heat time he’d have to lock himself in his room to avoid some big knuckle headed alpha slinging him over his shoulder and making off with him, because apparently they had no ability whatsoever to control themselves, so what made Blaine special? Who was to say he hadn’t caught Lina in a heat and gay or no gay there had been a kid on the way, and now he was hiding it because he didn’t want it to ruin his chances with Kurt? Wasn’t it stupid just to believe Blaine out of hand when all the evidence to the contrary was literally right under his nose?

“You can ask.” Kurt was startled out of his thoughts by Lina’s voice. The woman nodded towards the photo that Kurt had been staring at for so long and said, “If there are things you want to know, just ask. I may even answer.”

Kurt arched a brow at her, impressed despite himself with the woman’s candor. He took a fortifying sip of tea before he said, “Alright. Is Blaine Benito’s father?”

“No, and that’s insulting,” she responded with a hard tone and he sighed.

“I don’t want to insult Blaine, okay, I just—”

“Not Blaine, Kurt, me, you insult me.” Kurt pulled up short at the woman’s quiet interjection. “You realize don’t you, that for your suspicions to be true I would have had to decide I was going to live in an alpha’s back pocket like a faithful pet, backing up his lies and denying my son a true father figure while I waited hopefully for the man to return from his true mate for scraps of attention?” She asked the question with the kind of leading tone that Kurt remembered from his lesson with Allie that morning and the same sort he remembered his own mother using in his early development. It was embarrassing to have his thoughts put out there so baldly. Hearing Lina say those things made them seem twice as ugly and made it almost impossible to picture her doing them.

After a moment of staring at him she nodded as if deciding something for herself. “But then again, I understand what you must think and why you think it.” She reached up to lower the collar of her shirt and Kurt noted the column of her throat, alabaster and smooth as silk but for an old mottled scar at the base. It was raised and dark, clear evidence of a bite that had been left open to infection and then healed without much care attended to it.

“Is that…?”

“A claiming bite?” She released her collar and shifted minutely in her chair. “I met Benito’s father in Italy. He was handsome, charming, a powerful and dangerous man but you know how it can be.” She smiled conspiratorially at him as she recounted, but there was an unease in the tension of her shoulders, in the line of her mouth and Kurt noticed her fingers begin an agitated twitching that boded ill as he waited for her to continue. “I was young and a romantic. I knew that he was my father’s enemy but I suppose I thought my father just couldn’t understand what it was to love so deeply. I was tired of his and my brothers over protectiveness. He was my love and I called my love Amato. I gave him my whole heart, ran away from my father and my brothers and agreed to be his mate.”

Kurt stared again at the woman’s collar which now hid the bite he knew to be there and his stomach churned, thinking about the girl she must have been once. What kind of lover would bite like that and leave that sort of scar?

“He did that to you?” he asked, wishing that he was wrong but of course he wasn’t.

“Yes.” Her voice trembled now and Kurt didn’t press the issue when she stood and brushed off imaginary dust from her skit. “I don’t wish to talk about it anymore. Are you satisfied?” He wasn’t nearly but he wasn’t going to make this woman revisit something that was obviously painful for her.

“Kurt I…” he looked up when she fell off, watching curiously as she bit her lip and glanced around them with fearfulness. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, looking like she wanted to bolt but she could not bring herself to flee either; and for the first time Kurt saw something of what Headmaster Strand had told him about omegas.

“It’s okay, Lina. You can tell me anything you know. Tell me.” He didn’t know where the words came from or why he said them but at the command Lina’s shoulders relaxed and she looked back at him, washed with relief.

“I know why you thought what you did. It shocked me too when I met Blaine for the first time. He and my Benito are familiar spirits and I am so thankful for it because it means Blaine will always protect us. I know who you are to Blaine and I know that if you hate us… he would send us away; but that’s why I need you to understand. I know how hard it is to trust, to not even be able to trust yourself… to spend every moment of your life in fear. I know what that feels like. They say we are monsters and now you think it is true. Now you think you are a monster too.”

Kurt’s eyes widened in shock as she spoke to his thoughts and he cringed, realizing he must not have been able to keep all of them from leaking out so the others could hear and wondered what they would all be thinking and saying about him now, but Lina was shaking her head. She stepped toward him, such desperation and pleading in her eyes that Kurt stood as still as he could make himself as she leant close to him, her sweet scent surrounding him like a field of flowers even as her emotions hammered him like sharp pellets.

_Please understand don’t tellpleasedon’ttellBenitomustbesafedon’ttellnevertell_

He gripped her wrist without thinking and the touch seemed to ground her. She licked her lips and confessed on a shuddering breath, “I didn’t hear your thoughts. I know them because they were mine.” 

-*-*-

Jeff was helping the others skin their kills when he felt it. He could always feel when Nick was near these days, the growing bond between them only strengthened now that they’d been intimate. Ever since Nick had bit him and put a mark on him it seemed like all of Jeff’s senses had locked onto the other alpha. He knew from his lessons that this was a natural part of courtship, that they had established themselves as willing and compatible and now that they’d gone through all the trouble of falling in love, all that was left was to bite each other hard enough to mark permanently. His body was in the habit of constantly reminding him he was late for a very important date.

Jeff pocketed his skinning knife and alerted the others to a nonexistent summons from his mother, purposefully avoiding Wes’s suspicious gaze as he strolled towards the front of the Peterson house. He kept walking slowly, nonchalantly like the only thought in his head was enjoying the company of his pack mates and eventually finding his mother somewhere in the throng. He knew for a fact that his parents were on cub duty and were currently in Lina’s front room, but Jeff strolled right through Lina’s back yard and kept going. He quickened his pace when he was out of sight of the others, working the shadows to his advantage and following the insistent tugging in his gut that he somehow knew would lead him to Nick.

He stopped in his own back yard and stared up at the house his parents owned, the place he’d lived until he was old enough to attend school. Nick was sitting on the back steps as if he was the one who had grown up there, braced on his elbows and letting the summer breeze toss his dark hair. His eyes glinted in the moonlight and he cut quite a figure under the starry sky, a figure Jeff didn’t want to be appreciating when it belonged to a rogue wolf encroaching so daringly on his father’s territory.

Nick beckoned for him with an imperious gesture, as always fully expecting obedience, and rather than protest as Jeff had done ever since learning the thrilling stranger in town was actually MacTere and hell bent on hating his pack, he went to him eagerly. Indeed Nick was wreaking smugness as Jeff approached, his smile easy and superior as Jeff kissed him with hunger and pressed him back into the steps.

 _“I love how much you want me.”_ The thought slipped unbidden into his mind as Nick groaned, pulling away from him and panting. There was a vicious sort of satisfaction in that, but then as was his habit, Nick had to open his big mouth and ruin it.

“Come away with me.” Jeff stiffened as Nick raised his head and stared at him, waiting for a response.

“I’m not going anywhere with you Nick. We’ve been through this.”

“Yes, we have, and I’m getting tired of asking.” Nick’s eyes darkened as his grip on Jeff’s waist tightened into something that felt menacing. “Things are going to happen soon darling. Your little pack’s days are numbered.” Nick nuzzled the skin of his throat and murmured. “Why won’t you let me take care of you? I’d keep you safe.”

Jeff was still stuck on the first part. The words had hit him like a slap. He didn’t know why it felt like such a sucker punch, hearing Nick say that he and his band of strays had planned something (may have already put it in motion from the sounds of it) to hurt his pack was no great surprise. Nick had stopped pretending like his whole life didn’t revolve around destroying Blaine when they started bonding; it was too big a part of him for Nick to hide. Jeff wasn’t a complete knucklehead, he’d never expected Nick to do a 180 and join the pack or something equally unlikely, but he only realized as cold fury and hot hurt mixed inside him after hearing those words that a part of him had hoped that somehow he could convince Nick to give up his hatred, just enough for a chance at a them.

Nick was so gorgeous Jeff thought, especially when he was like this, smiling so confidently at him. The other man’s smile disappeared however when he felt the cool touch of Jeff’s skinning knife pressed against his side.

“Yes that’s a knife, and yes you were too damn full of yourself to check me for a weapon. And yes, you’re going to get off my parent’s land, and you’re never going to come back without an invitation.” The command was no softer for the kiss he pressed against Nick’s throat. He couldn’t help it. His mate was so close and smelled so very fantastic and Jeff had so few opportunities to see him. And now that Nick had gone and fucked things up for good who knew how many more he’d get before the end.

“Well, this is not the greeting I expected when I saw you again.” Nick’s voice was unperturbed by the knife point at his side but his body was tense and still, betraying him. Jeff let his mouth curl into a smile. He shouldn’t enjoy it as much as he did but the constant power play between them was thrilling. Had anyone asked he’d deny it, but secretly he thought it made the surrender, the moment when Nick forced him to yield and Jeff let him (when Jeff wanted Nick to pull every last bit of surrender from him) all the sweeter. They could work, he and Nick, they weren’t the only two alphas to choose this but now it never would work and Jeff was angry. He’d never been so angry.

Jeff pressed the knife in just a little and watched Nick jerk and hiss at the sting of the shallow cut. The teen asked through gritted teeth, “What did you expect? You thought that I’d let you fuck me and that would just be it? You thought you could play with me and I’d just roll over and let you hurt me and everyone I care about because I was _stupid_ enough to think there was something good about you?”

Snarling Nick snapped back, “I’ve never pretended to give a shit about your pack. You _knew_ exactly what I wanted and you let me fuck you anyway. Don’t blame me for—aah!” He liked it a little too much, being able to pull Nick up short with a slight bit of pressure.

“Just shut up. I don’t care Duval. So you screwed me. Big deal. I hope it was great. I hope it was the best fuck you’ve ever had, because it’s the last you’re ever going to have now that you’ve decided this stupid suicide mission you call vengeance is more important to you than me.”

“It’s not!” Nick hissed, and Jeff could tell he really wanted to hit something but he didn’t dare with the knife already poking him. “I mean, why do you think I’m here?”

“To be a little shit! To have your cake and eat it too, because you think I’m that fucking easy!” Somewhere along the line Jeff had started shouting and Nick was looking more and more nervous as Jeff kept cutting him and looking less and less in control about it.

“Shhhhh.” Nick glanced around nervously as Jeff’s voice echoed like a gong. “Baby, pl—aah shit! If you fucking stick me one more time with that!”

“I’m not your baby, _Nicky_ not if you’re going to hurt my people. So listen to me closely because I will not be saying this again. You’re going to leave my people alone. No more spying, no more vandalizing houses…” Nick’s eyes widened and Jeff rolled his. “You’re my mate Nick. Don’t think a little body spray is going to make you untraceable, not if the person hunting you is me. And that’s what I want you to pay close attention to. You had better fix whatever the fuck it is you did because the next time you hurt someone I love it’s not Blaine you’ll have to worry about. It’s me! I’ll kill you myself and I don’t care what it does to me.”

Nick looked so wounded at that it would have been comical if Jeff didn’t feel like his heart was being ripped out. He loved Nick, he did, for better or for worse but that didn’t mean they worked. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t still protect his pack no matter what the cost to himself. He was a son of Pack Westerville, born and bred. He was the protégé to the Alpha’s second and he lived for the day he’d one day swear himself to the guard. Jeff Sterling was a guard wolf through and through. Nick had chosen the wrong protégé as his foothold into the pack because Jeff would stop him and if he couldn’t do that, Jeff would stop himself.

“I can’t live with myself knowing everyone’s in danger because of me anyway,” he said so much more with that statement than either of them were willing to examine.

“No. Don’t say shit like that!” Nick was shaking his head, snarling, griping Jeff so tightly he was in danger of crushing him. “Stop this. Just listen… please. You don’t understand what’s coming. If you fight it you’ll die and I won’t let you die!”

“Then don’t.” Jeff stuck him again, this time to get him to loosen his grip and when Nick’s hands fell away Jeff extracted himself from his embrace and stood. “Because I’m not betraying my pack, Nick, not even for you.”

Not for anything.

-*-*-

Blaine had thought Kurt would be anxious when he didn’t return with the others from the hunt but Kurt was nowhere to be found when Blaine did finish his business and stroll into the Peterson’s yard and it worried him. His excitement to show Kurt his surprise dimmed as a tingling pressure built at the back of his skull, like a worry that he couldn’t vocalize. He walked briskly through the crowd, searching each face and unconsciously following an insistent tug in his gut until quite without realizing how, he found himself at Lina’s back door. It swung open as if on cue and for a moment Lina and Kurt just stood there, both of them pale and wreaking of stress, staring at him in guilt laden surprise.

“Kurt?” Blaine questioned and a second later the air was jostled out of him as Kurt practically leapt off the back steps to throw his arms around his neck. Blaine stood still, flabbergasted and not knowing what to do with his hands. Did Kurt want to be held? Was he having some sort of episode that he’d be embarrassed about later? Would it make it better or worse to touch him?

 _“Better.”_ Kurt’s thoughts answered his and without further thought Blaine wrapped his arms around him.

_“You okay?”_

“No.” Kurt mumbled into his shoulder. “I’m embarrassing myself, I know it, but I thought… I thought some really ugly things about you earlier.” Blaine frowned, unable to help the slight sting of hurt he felt hearing that.

“What things?” He asked, almost unsure if he wanted to know.

“Lina. I thought that maybe you’d lied to me… that maybe her heat had gotten the better of you, or the moon or something.”

Hearing Kurt say that more than hurt, it was like a cut. Kurt had thought he’d lie to him about something like that? Kurt had thought he’d breed a female without bonding to her? He’d thought that Blaine would keep Lina hanging on and treat his own cub like a stranger’s child, all so he could have a chance at his own happiness with his true mate? What kind of a person did Kurt think he was?

 _A monster,_ his unhelpful brain supplied and he pulled away, needing space for a moment to breathe.

“No, don’t…” Kurt pleaded with him, reaching for him even as Blaine moved away. Did Kurt even realize how often he did that? “Don’t look at me like that, okay. This is hard for me—”

“Well it isn’t easy for me either!” He snapped, because Kurt had no idea how _not_ easy this was, how not easy it was not to touch him, to let him walk around free and unmarked surrounded by other alpha’s, to tell Adam he could try and take what was _his_. “Didn’t it occur to you even once that if I’m such an animal I could have just had you on the full moon. You begged me for it. Do you think that was easy for me?”

The words stung like regret in his mouth and Blaine thought he might regret them later but for the moment they felt so very true, and so very justified, and at the very least they were making Kurt step back. He couldn’t handle being touched right now.

“I’ve told you. Do not expect me to clap you on the back Blaine for being a decent human being. Because I won’t—”

“I’m not a human being!” Blaine yelled the words that seemed to have been pounding in his skull for days, their release providing instant relief. As his voice echoed out over the lawn heads turned their way but neither of them noticed. “Which is the only thing that matters to you right now and yet you still expect me to act like one, and to treat _you_ like one even though every inch of you that isn’t wrapped up in your head knows exactly what it wants and is trying to get it.”

Kurt clamped his mouth shut, fuming, but apparently going to wait until Blaine ran out of steam. Blaine had lived with him for a year so he knew better than to let the opportunity pass. He had one shot at getting this across correctly, and it didn’t help that his emotions were all off kilter. Hurt and anger was swirling dangerously with jealousy and that constant urge of his to grab Kurt and just _bite_ was screaming at him now. Blaine pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath in. He had to calm down and sort himself out. Kurt had clearly been rattled by something when he opened the door, his own emotions off balance enough to lower his walls and seek comfort from Blaine immediately, and here he was yelling at him.

“Are you done?” Kurt asked with venom in his deceptively sweet tone. “Because you can go on. I Believe you were telling me how much I want you and should stop thinking with my empty little head and start thinking with my cock.”

“Kurt, that’s not what I meant,” he groaned and Kurt folded his arms across his chest.

“Isn’t it?” Kurt scoffed in reply.

“Look… I didn’t come here to fight,” Blaine relented as he fished in his pocket ad grasped what he’d stored there. When he extended his hand and dangled the set of keys in front of Kurt the taller man just stared at them in confusion. “They’re keys,” he offered.

“I can see that Blaine. What are they keys to?”

“Three-oh-three west Cherry drive, aka the little rental house two streets up and three houses left.” Kurt gaped at him. “It became clear to me today how selfish I was being. I mean, I wasn’t intending to keep you there indefinitely but you were sleeping in my bed and smelling like me… nobody was going to come near you with anything close to romance, even if you wanted them to, and that’s not fair. I promised you choices and the spirit of that is freedom right? So take the rental. You can use the community account if you like, to do your shopping, until we can send for your clothes. That way you can also get yourself some necessities….” He trailed off and they stood staring at each other for a long tense pause with Kurt gripping the keys in his hand as if he feared Blaine might snatch them away.

“You’re giving me a house?” Kurt eventually asked, slow and deliberate, as if trying out a new language.

“Territory,” Blaine confirmed. “It’s something we all need and this will be yours until you decide you don’t want it, and of course you’re free to invite or forbid whoever you want to it.”

Kurt said absolutely nothing and Blaine didn’t know finding his mate could result in sadness like this.

“Does this mean I’m no longer invited into yours?” The question took Blaine off guard when he finally spoke and Kurt clarified at his stupefied expression. “Chandler said this morning that he’d never been in the alpha’s territory. So if I have my own territory now, I just want to know if it means I’m no longer welcome in yours.”

Warmth trickled back inside as a smile, tentative but oh so hopeful, crept onto his face.

-*-*-

“Oh I don’t know,” Blaine replied to him with a shrug. “As long as you knock first I guess.” It was a joke, both of them knew it was, but some part of Kurt was so so relieved that Blaine’s gift wasn’t actually a rejection wrapped up in a pretty bow. Blaine wasn’t just getting tired of his “silly human needs” and casting him off. He really got it.

“Thank you,” Kurt whispered in reply, and then he followed it with the thoughts he couldn’t quite vocalize. _“That’s what I was going to say before, when I saw you and nearly crushed you to death. I want you to know... Nobody would stop you from taking advantage of me, they wouldn’t even see it that way. Nobody protected Lina, nobody stopped him from doing those terrible things and she’s been so alone with it all, but that’s supposed to be ‘just the way it is’, mated is mated and it made me realize how sick some people can be… but you, you’ve stopped yourself every time and not just because someone taught you it was bad. You stop because you know I need you to and that should have been enough for me to know you’d never have slept with her, heat or no heat. I only held onto that thought so hard because I was looking for a reason to keep you at arm’s length… I’m sorry, Blaine.”_

Blaine nodded briefly in acceptance saying softly, “I shouldn’t have said what I did or I acted like I know more about what you want than you do. We both said things we didn’t mean, but its okay.” Kurt knew that it wasn’t but there was nothing to be done for it now but to move on. Blaine, for all that Kurt didn’t want to mate with him, was still his friend and truly an exceptional one at that. When he left Westerville hearing other people talk about lycans would be different, and not just because he himself was lycan now. It was different because will have known a man who was kind and had shown him every mercy he possibly could, even when nobody expected it of him. That man wasn’t a monster and that meant neither did Kurt have to be, or any of the others for the matter. There were liberties that the alphas were allowed that Kurt felt desperately needed changing… but that was a thought for another day. Blaine cleared his throat, bringing Kurt out of his thoughts.

“When you’re ready, Chandler can show you the property.” Kurt opened his mouth and anticipating his question Blaine added, “It will defeat the purpose if my scent is all over the front porch.” When Kurt made an accepting sound he nodded in the direction of the Peterson’s yard. “Care for dinner?”

Kurt conceded that point and Blaine started to reach for him and stopped mid motion. With a sheepish half grin he stuffed his hands in his pockets and stood there so awkwardly Kurt just had to take pity on him. Knocking their shoulders together playfully he stepped up beside him and looped their arms together.

“Lead the way Master Kenobi. What’s on the menu?”

“Rabbit and venison on a stick, a do it yourself shish kabob.”

“My favorite,” Kurt replied pithily. “How did you know?”

“At least you get to roast it yourself this time.”

They laughed together, the sort of low and private laughter that was warm and common in the best of friends, and Kurt decided for himself that yes, after much consideration he could honestly say that the feeling of Blaine’s amusement trickling across his senses was his favorite in the world. That’s how he knew he would stay, even if lycan society was confusing and dark in ways he wasn’t sure he was ready to handle, even if it was hard having most of them against him. He was coming to understand that wouldn’t change even when he went home. He had never been wholly accepted in human circles to begin with and now there was even more to ostracize.

It was strange to think that the world could be so cold, seemingly over filled with dark things and even darker prospects, and yet all of that could fall away in the presence of a good friend. Lycan and human alike, everybody needed those.


	14. Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new moon brings with it the beginning of a new waxing period, a whole new set of troubles for Kurt and news of trouble brewing in Columbus.

“Can I open my eyes now?” Janet asked, nearly tripping over a long branch lying on the ground. Her boyfriend Terry winced as he guided his girlfriend of two months through the darkened park, trying not to ruin their date by landing her with a sprained ankle.

“Wait. Okay, just walk this way.”

Terry didn’t think he was the best date in the world, I mean, he wasn’t like Brad Pitt or anything or super romantic like those guys in the movies Janet liked, but Janet always seemed happy with him, especially when he did something a little extra—which was why he was currently leading her through the park blindfolded with a cooler on one arm.

He thought dinner in the park was a really good idea, and Janet seemed really excited about the surprise, even if it was a little cheesy. She looked great in that dress, he thought as he gently guided her to sit in the grass. It might even be new. So maybe he should say something? But he didn’t want to say anything in case he was wrong and she’d worn it before. Unless it _was_ new and she was waiting for him to say something? He was shit when it came to stuff like that.

Terry gulped and concentrated instead on laying out their picnic, kicking himself when he realized he’d left the blanket in the car. What kind of a moron forgot the blanket? Scowling he inspected the ground carefully. The least he could do was make sure he wasn’t laying out the food in duck poop. Crap! Okay yah maybe he’d just go get the blanket.

“Um Janet I forgot blankets in the car…” he mumbled, his whole face turning red as her head turned toward his voice. Way to be suave Terry. Wasn’t he a regular Casanova. “I’ll be right back okay?”

“Okay.” She sounded uncertain and he could have kicked himself. Right, because every girl would be completely comfortable being led to an unknown location and left there blind folded. She probably thought this was going to turn into some sort of prank.

“No, I promise. I’ll be right back. It’s not far. I just want this to be perfect.” He made sure to hurry anyway not wanting to leave her alone in the dark thinking maybe he was just going to leave her there. Terry wasn’t that kind of guy but he knew some people could be jerks like that. It took him a bit of time digging in the trunk to find the blanket which had become trapped under some of his hockey gear. When he’d managed to wrestle it loose he shut the trunk of his car and felt a strange prickling on the back of his neck. He couldn’t say what the feeling going up and down his spine was, but it made him feel like he was being watched. He glanced around the empty parking lot nervously and then down by the pond where he’d left Janet.

His eyes widened in alarm when he spotted the cooler, alone and up ended in the grass. It was hard to see everything from this distance but it didn’t look like Janet was anywhere in sight.

“Janet?” He called out, wondering if she’d become frightened by herself and had gotten up to follow him. How tight had he tightened the blindfold? Was she wandering around the park alone? Had she fallen into the water and hit her head? Frightened, Terry began to stride back towards the pond his mind racing with a million and one accidents that could have befallen Janet in the five minutes he’d been gone.

He never imagined that stranger dressed in leather could be stalking them in the dark. He didn’t see him coming either.

-*-*-

Kurt had been living in the rental house on Cherry drive for almost two and a half weeks exactly, and two and a half weeks was just enough time to fall into an odd sort of routine. The first week he’d been preoccupied mostly with assimilating. In the mornings he met Blaine and the others at Anderson house for breakfast and then accompanied Blaine and whoever else was with him that day (typically an alternation between Wes, David, Adam, and their protégés) on his morning rounds. If he wasn’t sent off on a specific assignment (like on that first Tuesday when he and Jeff had been assigned to accompany a pair of outer guard wolves on their morning patrol duty of Annehurst ) he and Blaine would have some sort of private lesson until it was time for Kurt and the others to report to Allie for den hour. After their lesson with Allie they’d have lunch and a couple of free hours in the afternoon for study and practice, or in Kurt’s case to take the other protégés in one of the community vans and make use of the debit card Blaine had given him to get his essentials.

He felt strange about using the debit card at first, but Sugar had been quick to inform him that Blaine was _loaded_ and that it was his job to support the community Kurt now found himself a part of. Apparently all of their funds were communal. On top of whatever fortune Blaine’s ancestor had brought with him from Ireland, many members of the pack held jobs in town and paid their alpha a heavy percentage of their earnings. Lina’s neighbor Greg Peterson for instance ran a bookshop in town, the Howls ran a bar, and Lina herself worked at a small café in downtown Westerville run by the Lynches and each of them were happy to pay community tithes. Sugar’s father was a successful businessman who ran a chain of music shops from Cincinnati, but he, as well as many of the other wealthier parents who sent their children to foster at Dalton, was also happy to contribute large donations to the Anderson bank account.

“Tuition and housing at Dalton is free of course but Daddy pays Blaine a ton of money anyway because he wants this place to be the best. I deserve the best education and lifestyle there is, don’t you think?”

Even still, Kurt wasn’t very comfortable with the knowledge that if he ever called this pack home that more than half his wages would go to Blaine. Having to rely on the fact that Blaine would use them wisely and to the benefit of all made him wary, and not because he actually feared that Blaine would misuse his privileges, it was just very different from everything he’d grown up with. The whole American dream was built on an individual’s right to their own wealth and their own property, but he knew that historically speaking it wasn’t like civilizations hadn’t (and didn’t still) run like the pack did and prosper. And he could admit that even in America nobody’s money was completely their own; after all he paid taxes like everybody else. 

There was no getting around that the lycan community in Westerville was prosperous. The houses in Annhurst were all well-kept, all of their rents and mortgages paid, all of the lycan’s he’d met so far well clothed, well fed, and seemingly happy with the way things were.

So Kurt and the others shopped for the things he needed to get by until his things in Columbus could be brought to him, and Kurt tried not to let any of them go overboard (Chandler wanted an oversized ornate mirror they passed in an antique shop that while gorgeous was also over two thousand dollars and not a necessity in any sense of the word). Kurt was very aware of the fact that he was using money he hadn’t earned, plus he had to keep all the receipts for Blaine’s book keeper and even if Blaine was _loaded_ like Sugar insisted, he just couldn’t see himself handing Blaine a receipt for a two thousand dollar mirror he would only have to leave behind when he left.

After their free hours they typically had more training sessions, some days they were private, and some days Blaine would take him to the arena for group sessions with some of the other protégés and their masters (and Kurt realized that was what he’d stumbled upon Jeff doing that morning after the full moon). After afternoon training they would have dinner and then there would be the evening conclave for the inner guard. Following the evening meal and meeting the rest of Kurt’s night was his to do with what he chose, so long as he wasn’t on assignment.

He had found his way to the café where Lina worked early in the first week and now most nights found him alone there with one of the books on his reading list (Blaine had honest to god put together a reading list comprised of old journals written by lycan scholars that were kept in the Anderson library) and while half of his brain recognized that human scholars would kill for a crack at the materials in his hands, the other half was honestly amused at how much this felt like college all over again.

He wasn’t always alone however. Lina was getting bolder about seeking him out, now consistently taking ten minutes or so during her shift to sit with him while he ate his desert. Kurt had even ended up sitting with Quinn a few times. When she did stop in it was typically on her way home from her work at the clinic (Kurt learned that Blaine had built her a practice at Dalton, complete with offices, a functioning lab, and several omegas employed as assistant nurses who might not have had actual medical degrees to speak of, but were plenty eager to learn something of modern medicine and to help Quinn with her research on lycan bodies). A few times he’d even been joined by Adam and some of the alpha masters their age, but Kurt’s favorite evening company of all was Blaine’s.

Blaine didn’t often find time just to sit in a café and read, or to sit period, Kurt was learning. There were always a million places his eyes could be used, his authority needed to smooth over some difficulty. He rotated all of their duties to make sure that every wolf in his guard was guaranteed at least one evening off a week if not more, but two weeks and some days was long enough for Kurt to observe that he did not reserve the same luxury for himself.

So it made him feel good, being able to cajole Blaine into joining him at his table, knowing that busy as he was Kurt could pull Blaine to his table simply by sitting at it by himself at the same time every free evening. He got Blaine to sit down and enjoy a slice of cheesecake and talk about things that had nothing to do with caring for the lives of hundreds of others. Blaine was smart and funny, and it was comforting to be near someone who knew him so well, one of the few times Kurt truly relaxed. They’d lived together for a year; Blaine knew all his interests and his stories and could share in them with his own memories and insights. The light in his eyes when he forgot to be Alpha Anderson and was just Blaine, sharing his side of the story about the time the electrician had screwed up and the house had been dark for a week with no working stove, convinced Kurt that time to just sit was good for them both.

Having his own space to retire to and books to read on lycan history and Westerville pack politics was nice for Kurt too. It was easy to get lost in the simplicity of reading something in a journal, to take full advantage of the way four walls of a house could put distance between a man and his worries, to allow himself to be pulled into routine and lulled into a sense of security. If something was disturbing about lycan life he had only to remember that he wouldn’t be a part of it. That if he passed the test of the next full moon with nobody harmed or molested by his hand he’d be free to go on his way. He’d go back to Columbus and back to theater and only have to worry about being lycan once a month. He’d worry about how he’d deal with romance later and if worst came to worst it wasn’t so bad being alone. He was used to it by now. 

But two weeks and a day (15.5 to be exact) was also all the time the moon, which had been full on the 18th of June, needed to wane and be ready to wax again.

The morning of the new moon, fifteen days from the last full moon, Allie handed out dog whistles.

“What are these for?” Kitty scoffed with displeasure at the demeaning objects and Kurt had to agree with her, confused as to why Allie would be handing them out when she knew how touchy they all were about being compared to dogs.

“They’re for you. To wear around your necks or keep in your pockets as you enter another waxing period. If you blow them hard enough they won’t be very fun for you or anybody close to you, but they may give you an opportunity to run and they will also alert anyone close enough to assist you that you are in need of assistance,” the older woman explained. “With a new moon comes the return of moon heats, as we discussed during the courting section of your lessons. As the moon gets fuller and fuller, hormone levels will rise. Dominant’s get more aggressive, subs more susceptible to their innate desire to be dominated. You’ve all been through a full moon. You know what you’re like.”

The others had snickered and Kurt had blushed, remembering all too well what only felt like days ago to him, trolling bars for strangers and sitting across a table from Tina fearfully admitting he thought he had turned into some sort of perverted sex addict.

“I don’t want any of you to think of this time negatively. Fertility is something to be celebrated, the sharing of bodies a wonderful and intimate experience when done with respect and care. The waxing period is fun for all, single and mated alike, but particularly beneficial for those of you who will one day soon be planning on starting families. A breeding heat is more likely to fall within a waxing period than within a waning for the obvious reason of rising hormonal levels in subs, but it can be troublesome in ways that I would be lax if I failed to remind you,” Allie went on to say. “It’s up to all of us to remain in control and for the strong to protect the weak from those who can’t. Hopefully everyone will have a safe and happy waxing period. But accidents happen, especially among the young. So this is why we take precaution. 

“Alphas: as dominants it is your duty to protect. You should make yourselves available to any submissive you find in distress and never allow a sub to come to harm. You must intercede with your peers, who can so easily overpower a submissive, if you suspect any abuse or violent coercion on behalf of a dominant towards a submissive. All of you with submissive instincts should reinforce the locks on your doors and windows as well as perform standard safety checks. Make an extra point not to travel alone for the next few weeks or with a trusted alpha if you can, and plan for the event of a spontaneous heat. They have been known to catch many submissive wolves unaware with the sudden rise in hormone levels. If you do find yourself in a situation these can be helpful, even if they are a bit silly.”

A rape whistle, Kurt thought as Allie finished passing around the thin silver objects. He had been handed a rape whistle because for the next two weeks he was going to become that man again, that unrecognizable one with an itch so bad he’d have rolled over for anyone. But no, he thought, that wasn’t quite right either because he’d tried _everyone_ , and none of the poor men he’d brought to his bed had been right. The whole time he’d been frustrated because none of them had given him what he’d been looking for. He’d all but chewed them up and spit them back out with distaste. What he had been looking for he’d found only with Blaine in the dirt, in the park beneath the moon with Blaine’s body over his and his wrists pinned firmly to the earth. He knew from his lessons and all the reading why that was, why another human male would struggle to satisfy him when he was in moon heat. He’d been looking to be dominated. He’d needed it so badly by the end he couldn’t even think straight.

He was gaining a better control of his wolf with each passing day but he didn’t deceive himself into thinking that it would be much better this time around. He knew from experience there was no way to stop the feelings, just to get better at being able to think past them. The urges would be there and his only choices would be to either indulge himself or remove himself from temptation. He wasn’t fond of the idea of going to the safe house, the place where subs could lock themselves up during a heat and wait it out, because it sounded miserable, but he wasn’t fond of the idea of another round of hook ups either. Especially not now that he understood the danger of sleeping with another lycan.

What would happen if he went to bed with someone who decided they were destined or something else he didn’t want to deal with and got bond-bit? The only person he really trusted himself to sleep with was ironically Blaine, who was for obvious reasons the last person he could trust himself to sleep with.

It wouldn’t be fair to either of them, not to mention oh so dangerous if he wanted to avoid getting mated but…

Something warm settled low in his belly and Kurt shivered, curling his hand around the whistle in his pocket. He willed himself to ignore the part of him that was intrigued by the idea of a repeat of the park. That was the part of him he had to close off for his own good, that part would get him shackled to a life he’d decided he didn’t want. But how to avoid it now? The moon was waxing. How long would he hold onto his principles when the heat came back?

 _You can’t,_ a little voice in the back of his mind whispered and he shivered.

~*~*~*~

Burt Hummel didn’t like to worry but one of the things being a dad had taught him was how to worry constantly. Even when they grew up and left the nest you were still worried they wouldn’t eat right or find what they needed to be happy. Burt had been worried about Kurt for a while. Things had been hard since Eric—Burt still couldn’t even think that assholes name without wanting to kick something—and his heart attack hadn’t helped matters. Kurt had seemed alright after he got the dog but then even the damn dog had run away.

Now Kurt was god only knew where in who knew what kind of trouble and Burt just had to sit and wait. When he’d gotten that call he hadn’t known what to do. Kurt was a grown man and it didn’t make much sense, but sometimes pain just didn’t. So if Kurt needed to get away for a while he’d give him time, he’d give Kurt anything he said he needed in that tone of voice. He’d hoped that Kurt would give him some word, something as quick as a voicemail or a text to let him know where he was and that he was fine so that Burt wouldn’t worry but it had been nearly three weeks of silence.

He’d be better, not fine but better, if it weren’t for these killings. Six in Columbus, starting with that girl at that coffee shop, all of the victims killed the same way, the authorities being tight lipped about the details but everybody getting the picture anyway. There had been a public warning released that there was a serial killer loose in Columbus and not just any killer but all signs pointed to vampire. It wasn’t the first time one of the subhuman had gone killer, not by a long shot. It happened enough to make the Human Conservation Party worth a listen and average guys like Burt leery of promises from the Wizard Guild that humans were safe and that the subhuman community would see to apprehending the psychopath.

Looking at the mangled bodies of two teenagers found in a park he’d been in himself just a few months ago made him inclined to agree with Senator Riley instead.

There was no such thing as a psychotic monster. Monsters like that just did what they were programed to do, which in this case was drink the blood of two kids and leave them tossed aside like so much trash. When he’d heard the bodies had been found in that park Kurt liked he’d been so relieved that Kurt wasn’t in the city anymore. Burt didn’t want him to come back till this blood sucker was dealt with.

Only Burt didn’t know that Kurt wasn’t in the city. He had no idea where Kurt was and that just wasn’t okay anymore. Not when there were bodies piling up.

~*~*~*

Kurt was surprised at the sound of a knock on his door late that night. He and Chandler had been on assignment, patrolling the west border of the forest with Blaine and Adam and it was just after nine in the evening. He was home a bit earlier than he might have been if Blaine hadn’t been called away by some important something that Kurt and Chandler weren’t allowed to be privy to. He’d been home with just enough time to wash away the sweat and grime from his skin and contemplate making a snack that would assuage his rumbling belly. He still couldn’t eat all of his food at meal times and keep it down but he ate enough to prove that he was trying. Typically on free evenings he waited to get his fill at the café.

He wasn’t expecting a visitor on account of the fact that no one besides Blaine had visited him here yet so he walked to the door fairly confident that it would be Blaine on the other side, only to find Lina there instead, dressed in a light sundress and sandals carrying a large wicker basket in her arms.

“Lina?” He couldn’t help but wonder what she was doing on his doorstep. Sure they’d gotten closer since their talk in her kitchen two weeks ago, but the omega woman could be very tentative and getting her to feel comfortable enough to talk was usually an effort on Kurt’s part that required much coxing.

“Hello, Kurt,” her cheer was just that little bit forced, betraying her discomfort as she greeted him. “I hope I’m not bothering you, I know it’s late. I’ve got Benito in the basket so I won’t stay long. It’s just that you didn’t come to the café tonight. I know you don’t when you have guard duty, but I’ve heard the talk about how it’s hard for you to eat. Not that many people are talking, not anyone worth worrying about, just lippy gossips being gossips.” Lina finally took a breath as her face flushed, her shoulders shrinking as she shifted her weight nervously from foot to foot. He smiled at her, waiting patiently for her to continue and the gesture seemed to set her at ease.

“Anyway,” she started again, lifting the basket closer against her chest. “I was throwing things out at the café and I thought you might like some of it? I’m not over stepping am I?”

Kurt didn’t answer right away, caught off guard by the woman’s warm gesture. He knew that Lina still (wrongfully) feared his influence on Blaine, and what would happen to her and Benito if he should decide he didn’t want them around. Even though he wasn’t convinced there was anything he could say or do that would ever make Blaine turn the mother and her child out of the pack it was a very real fear of hers. He didn’t think it was a fear Lina could easily put aside either. He knew it would take the woman time to be completely comfortable and put aside the fear that she’d say or do something to anger him enough to turn on her. So this gesture and what it required, her stepping onto his land uninvited at an unwelcome hour to call attention to a pride sensitive issue, was surprisingly kind, not to mention brave.

When he didn’t immediately reply she paled, clutching the basket tighter as she took a step back.

“Did I offend you? Of course I have. Please just forget this. I’ll go and I won’t tell anyone I—”

“No, Lina, it’s fine,” he quickly interjected reaching to lightly touch the woman’s wrist, a gesture that their previous conversations had taught him went a long way towards calming her nerves. “I’m touched, really, I was just surprised. This was very kind of you.”

“Are you sure?” She asked uncertainly, her body still tensed beneath his fingers. “It just occurred to me that someone as dominant as you might take offense to being table fed like a cub.”

Kurt was sure that the big headed alpha’s Lina was used to would never tolerate being given pity scraps because they couldn’t keep their meal down, not if they were anything like Flint and Headmaster Strand, but Kurt for one was thankful.

“My pride will recover. I’m starving and I was just thinking about fixing something up so this is a god send, believe me.” He stood back and gestured for her to step inside the house and her eyes widened in momentary shock, but without any further hesitance she stepped inside. Kurt led her to the kitchen, thanking her polite praise of his décor. She placed the basket on the table and removed the blanket covering its contents, and even Kurt had to admit the sight of the tiny black cub curled around the Tupperware containers the basket also contained was heart melting. The cubs round belly rose rhythmically with his breaths as he slept, ears twitching every now and again.

Catching Kurt’s soft expression Lina smiled at him and explained a tad apologetically, “I don’t like being away from him for long hours. He stays in the basket while I’m at work, but don’t worry I made sure all the lids on the food were on tight before I left.” Kurt laughed in response.

“Don’t worry about it. After eating raw meat a little harry casserole isn’t going to faze me.”

He grabbed two sets of silverware as Lina laid out the food she’d brought: a half slab of ribs, potatoes, house salad and to his delight even a couple slices of the cheesecake he adored.

“You’re an angel!” He declared, reaching immediately for the cake.

“Nuh-uh” she smacked his hand away, shoving the container of ribs towards him instead. She was grinning at him caught up in the warmth of the moment and Kurt didn’t draw any attention to the fact that she’d just willingly touched him. “Supper first, desert later didn’t your mama ever teach you?”

“She tried while she could,” Kurt didn’t let the familiar sadness talk of his mother always invoked overwhelm him or the conversation. He kept his voice very light as he said, “she died when I was very young. But my stepmother Carol tried her best to bridge the gaps in my education.”

“It is a sad thing to lose one’s mother,” Lina said and Kurt knew that look on her face to mean one thing. Inevitably when people learned that he’d lost his mother so young he received one or two of the same responses, but every now and then someone looked at him like Lina was looking at him now, and he knew that he was understood the only way he possibly could be. “My mother died when I was six.”

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t know when he’d reached for her wrist again, but at the stroke of his thumb she smiled at him again, breathing easy if a bit glassy in the eyes.

“It is the way of the world, Kurt, men and women are born and then they die. I had my papa and all of my brothers for comfort. Were you alone?”

“No,” Kurt shook his head, never gladder to be able to say, “I had my dad.”

“You’re a good dominant,” she said after a moment of silence between them. At Kurt’s surprised expression she flushed and nodded towards his hand over her wrist. He felt his own face flushing as he withdrew his hand. Smiling gently at him she nudged his food toward him as she said, “It is nothing to be ashamed of. Your dominance is good… for me, I mean, when I struggle. I am learning not to become so frustrated with myself, to accept the parts of me that others see as weak.”

“You’re not weak Lina,” Kurt didn’t hesitate to say, because anyone who thought this woman was weak just because she happened to be an omega, didn’t have a brain in their head. “You’ve survived, you’ve found and made a place for you and Benito where you’re both happy. There’s nothing weak about you.”

She bit her lip and looked away, but Kurt caught the gleam of pleasure in her eyes nonetheless. He let the silence go however, digging into the food she’d brought, and Lina was content to watch. When the sharper edge of his hunger had abated he swallowed and licked the tangy sauce that had coated the ribs from his teeth, grimacing at the dry grainy taste in the meat that the sauce couldn’t hide.

“It’s better raw,” Lina commented with a look of sympathy.

“I know,” he agreed with a soft sigh, chasing the unpleasant taste with a scoopful of mashed potatoes “At least my taste buds do. I’m still trying to communicate that to my brain.” He got up to grab a pair of glasses from the cupboard and poured them both glasses of water. Lina tried to turn it down but he insisted, gesturing sternly to her set of silverware while he was at it.

“Don’t let me eat all this cake by myself. It’ll go straight to my ass.”

“I don’t know about that,” Lina mused quietly, picking up her fork nonetheless. “A little jiggle in the ass never goes amiss.” Kurt choked on his water. Lina grinned innocently at him taking a delicate bite of cake.

“Oh so there’s someone evil behind that sweet charade is there?”

“My brothers always said so.”

“And they’re back in Italy?”

“Yes.”

“Your whole family?”

“Perhaps… some of my brothers may have left to search for me. It’s hard to know.” It was a sensitive area, Kurt already knew that, but something about the way Lina said it gave him the impression she didn’t welcome the idea.

Carefully he asked, “Have you ever thought about getting in touch with them now that you and Benito are safe?”

“No.” Her answer was so immediate it left no room for doubt. He said nothing, allowing her to either continue or let the subject dropped as she wished. It wasn’t his place to pry. It had to be hard for her and whatever her reasons for not wanting to get in touch with her family they were hers. Wincing she offered him a false little slip of a smile and tried to explain, “My father is an important man, Kurt, he’s…”

“Like Blaine?” Kurt guessed when she floundered and slowly Lina nodded.

“He is a leader of many, yes, and often a hard man. But he loved mama greatly, and I am all that is left of her. I angered him when I chose my mate. He would not be glad of Benito’s existence so I am happy to keep them both unaware of each other.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to explain anymore if you don’t want to. I probably shouldn’t have asked,” he apologized. “That was forward.”

“It wasn’t forward. It was friendly… I just find it hard to talk about my family.”

“Then let’s not talk about them.” Kurt acquiesced. “Tell me the gossip. I bet the café is a beehive for it.” Lina was eager to move the conversation elsewhere.

“Yes, it’s definitely that. Well, the Martin’s have decided to start their litter.”

“And they are…?”

“Derrick and Amanda? Tall omega male and short brunette alpha female?” Kurt nodded, remembering meeting a pair that fit that description during one of their morning rounds. Lina smiled around a bite f cheesecake, swallowing before she added. “Derrick’s not on schedule for a breading heat for another four weeks but Amanda’s hoping to use the moon to speed him into one. Either way we won’t be seeing much of them for a while.”

Kurt hummed, his thoughts brought back to the troubling onset of the full moon, his stomach suddenly feeling queasy.

“What do you do?” he suddenly wondered and Lina blinked at him in confusion. “When the moon is waxing, when it goes full and everyone is…how they are. What do you do?”

“Oh,” Lina nodded as comprehension dawned. “Well my Benito is still nursing. I do get a bit antsy around the full moon, but it’s different when you have a cub at home. Not many would survive if every couple of weeks their parents became too preoccupied to properly care for them.”

Remembering how wild he’d become right before the full moon last time around Kurt had to admit that made sense. At least Mother Nature knew what she was doing on that score.

“So when he stops nursing…” he inquired and Lina filled in the blanks.

“My body chemistry will adjust and breeding will once again be the primary directive.”

Kurt scrunched his nose in a pout as he took another bite of cake. He didn’t want to think about babies anymore. He wasn’t going to be having any _that_ way period and it just sucked that his body couldn’t get with the program and stop turning him into a lust addled machine once a month.

“So pregnancy banks the fire for a bit. Is there any other way that you know of to stop the hormones?” He asked. “Ways that don’t involve me becoming an Oprah special that is?”

“Only to take a mate,” Lina, full of good news, disclosed. “Nothing is ever going to stop you being affected by the moon Kurt. You are lycan, pulled by her tides, pulled to mate and to procreate. It is well known that single lycans suffer moon heat the worst. It’s Mother Nature’s way of making sure you meet her demands. You know take a mate, have babies, keep the species going.”

“Don’t you think in this case she overcompensates?” He grumbled. “I mean I’ve never slept with so many strangers with questionable fashion sense in my life.”

“It will be easier this time Kurt,” she smiled encouragingly at him. “Now that you have more experience and you are with Blaine. Soon you will mate and you will wish every night was a full moon.”

“I’m not.” He couldn’t help it. Lina was just one of many that assumed he was going to mate with Blaine but he just couldn’t let her go on assuming that when he wasn’t sure yet if he was, when he was growing more and more terrified that there was a time limit on how long he had to decide. Two weeks. Who decided anything of this kind of magnitude in two weeks?!

“You’re not what?” She asked, confusion clouding her face again and Kurt took a deep breath.

“Mating with Blaine.” Lina blinked at him, as unresponsive as if he had suddenly started speaking in Greek and Kurt rolled his eyes. “We’re close and he’s great but I’m not sure that any of this is what I want, in fact I’m pretty sure it’s not. So I won’t be mating with him, possibly not with anyone ever, so how do I do that? How do I not lose who I am and what I want when two weeks from now my mind and body are only going to care about getting me bonded?”

“Oh Kurt.” The sorrowful expression on her face was enough. It was as he suspected. No matter how good a friend Blaine was, he was going to be hard pressed to leave Kurt alone come full moon and Kurt probably wouldn’t have good enough mind to stay away. He’d be outright throwing himself at the man’s feet if last time around was anything to go by; and he was listening, he had heard Blaine when he’d said how hard it was to hold himself back _now_ and allow Kurt to make a choice that he felt was truly all his own. Imagine then!

“Yeah… that’s what I thought.” He gulped, something like terror welling up inside. “I think I have to leave. I have to… I can’t _be_ here anymore if it means not having a choice.”

Lina glanced at the door with wide eyed horror as if she expected Kurt to go running for it right then and there, shaking her head quickly and insistently.

“No!” The force in her tone shocked Kurt to attention. In the basket Benito whined and Lina quickly reached over to rub his belly. When she spoke again it was lower but with no less insistence. “I don’t know how much you understand yet about lycans, about courting but Blaine is… Blaine is dedicated to you now. He can’t simply let you go. If you run he will chase you and it will only be worse.” The way her hands were trembling made him think she was speaking from experience. He couldn’t help but look at her scars, consider each one for what they meant and how they had gotten there. The thought that Blaine, who was so sweet and earnest most times, could turn into someone who would chase after him and drag him back against his will was almost inconceivable. The almost was the most terrifying part of it. Watching his face Lina bit her lip, shaking her head again as she bit words out.

“He’s not… They’re not monsters, Kurt. I thought so once but I was wrong, and Blaine is the best of them. But he is still lycan, his heart is still tied to yours and he still must protect you at all costs. He cannot let you leave and not know where you are, not know if someone else will claim you… you’re asking the impossible from him.”

He opened his mouth to demand what was so impossible about a simple no, about leaving him alone to return to the life that he wanted, but something that she’d said caught up with him and made him pause. She’d said _them_ as if she set herself apart from other lycans. It wasn’t the first time either he realized, recalling that night in her kitchen when she’d been so afraid that Kurt would turn on her and Benito that she’d confessed a past she obviously wanted nothing more than to forget. She’d said she understood his thoughts, understood _him_ , understood what it was like to fear everything around her and fear most of all that she herself was becoming something to be feared.

Lina who also knew what it was like to lose a mother, who looked at him with understanding a person could only get one way.

“You’re a convert,” he guessed with pure shock and the way Lina went still and barely dared to breathe was a tell all. Elation quickly followed the shock, so much so that he was dizzy with it, and then confusion. Why hadn’t she told him before this? Why hadn’t she told _anyone_ for that matter and how could her father be a pack Alpha if she’d been human before this?

“How can that be? Your father…”

“Is a great man from a powerful family” she admitted, her voice small. “You assumed it was Lycan’s he led and I let you. Most people do.”

“Your mate took you when you were human?!”

“He didn’t take me. I went willingly enough…at first. But when he bit me to bond it was enough to convert me.”

“But you have to be ly-kindred for that, otherwise _anyone_ you guys bit would become lycan.”

“He was a pack Alpha and I was in love with him, Kurt, I was as ly-kindred as I could get. I wanted to be with him, I wanted him to turn me so that we could be together. I had grown up hearing that he and his kind were devils and I believed that until him, until I fell in love. As it turned out my family was right about him. My Amito might have been a devil but he was still my mate. He could not let me go, would let no one harm me unless it was he himself who did the harm. You do not run from a predator when you are the prey. That is why I tell you running is not the answer.”

“Because Blaine is going to go feral on me? Because I’m his prey now?” Kurt demanded to know, terror at the prospect making him angry and defiant. “Is he going to tear at my throat and leave scars like your Amito and call it love too?” He regretted the words even as they left his lips, prepared for the woman’s full body flinch, but rather than sink inwards like he had become accustomed to Lina’s eyes flashed with heat and the teeth in her mouth had gone sharp and wolfish as she bared them at him.

“If you drive him to it!” She snarled, her voice roughened by the growl rumbling in her chest. “And if you do Kurt Hummel I will never forgive you! Do not be cruel to him. Is he to be a paragon of virtue, never losing himself to the wolf, when you yourself cannot say the same? Have you never wanted to protect something enough to let the wolf have you? Because from what I hear you are as much a wolf as he or I.”

Shocked into silence by the woman’s sudden turn towards the ferocious Kurt didn’t move, didn’t so much as blink, not even when Benito popped his head up over the rim of the basket and yipped at them both in distress. With shaking hands the woman scooped the cub into her arms and soothed him with strokes until he was quiet. It was a minute or two before Lina spoke again, both of them breathing heavily in the strained silence.

“The difference between Blaine and the man I loved is that hurting you in such a way would destroy him. So much so that I hardly believe he could do it, but I know our instincts, I know how hard the wolf fights to protect what it loves. I do not know what will happen if you run away Kurt Hummel, I just know that it will mean the end of one of the kindest men I know, so don’t you run. You stay here and you face this because it’s happening and there’s no running from it now.”

“How?” His voice cracked as he forced the word out, facing the fear of what was to come as he finally let the notion of simply leaving before the full moon slip away. She was right. He didn’t have to like it. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair, but it was happening nonetheless. It was too late to walk away now. Jeff had warned him it would be and he had chosen to stay regardless. He had no one to blame that on but himself. Lina finally looked up at him again, the wolf gone from her eyes, the warm understanding he was coming to rely on returned in its place.

“I don’t know. You told me I was strong when I survived, when I found a way to be happy and to keep my son safe. So you be strong too. Find a way to survive and to be happy. What else can you do?”

Nothing he conceded. He couldn’t sit across from this woman, this person whose life had been altered as dramatically as his own, who may have asked for the change but not to lose everything she knew, and never to be used as cruelly as Kurt suspected she had been used. Somehow she survived, she made way in a world that was harsh and managed happiness and a measure of love and understanding towards a people group no one would have blamed her for despising. He couldn’t fathom the type of strength she had, or what it was going to take for him to muster the same. Then again, people never could, not till they were forced to have it.

Wordlessly she reached across the table and took his hand.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do Lina,” he admitted. “I-I don’t want to mate with anyone. I’m not ready.”

“Shhh piccolo,” She stroked her thumb over his hand soothingly. “I did not mean to say you must mate with him or else. He is courting you yes, but so may many others. That is the way of things yes? You are not the first to take time deciding. Why not simply ask Blaine if he will share the night with you? He does not repulse you does he?” Kurt snorted and the woman grinned at him. “Then be intimate. We are wolves, we do not shy from intimacy. There is nothing more important to us. It is beautiful and often shared among friends. We are pack. If we cannot trust each other with our bodies what can we trust each other with? You do not have to bond-bite just because you decide to have sex.”

“But is that something he can do?” It wasn’t as if Kurt hadn’t already considered sleeping with Blaine, it was something he’d considered far more than he should to be honest. “I mean if my running away will trigger his wolf I can hardly imagine what sex will do.”

“It may, that is only something he can answer. If he does not feel the two of you can be intimate without succumbing to the urge to claim you then you are always free to share your body with someone else, that is our custom. You are unmated and your partners should be your choice. Choose someone you trust, only tell Blaine now. That is only smart, that is what any of us would do. He is a man, not a beast, and with proper warning he has every ability to control his instincts, just as you and I do. He will respect your wishes when you voice them. ”

“So in other words communicate?” Kurt asked, smiling begrudgingly at the older woman. It sounded so simple and uncomplicated when she laid it out like that.

“Yes,” Lina agreed with an affirming nod. “To talk is always best.”

~*~*~*~

“You know what this means don’t you?” Wes asked and Blaine looked away from the window to glance back at the taller man. Adam and David were standing near the beta male, his three most trusted squaring off with the one foreign presence in the room. Noah Puckerman was by no means a stranger to pack Westerville. Though he had never been invited into the Alpha’s private study before there had been a time when he had lived here much as Kurt was living now, welcome to run with the outer guard and well-liked by most of the pack. Blaine had hoped the lone wolf would settle with the pack but, a wanderer at heart, Puck had chosen to move on to greener pastures. Blaine knew some of the wolves in the guard were still sore about his decision to leave for Columbus, to become a city wolf of all things.

Blaine had often wondered if Puck wouldn’t find his way back to their door step, the alpha much too spirited for city life no matter what was currently holding him there. But it wasn’t for personal reasons that Puck had come to them this time, otherwise David would not have called Blaine away from his task. The study doors were closed tightly on any wandering eyes or straining ears, the five men closed up in Blaine’s private corridors as Puck delivered disturbing news from their neighboring pack.

There was a rogue vampire loose in Columbus and he or she was on a record killing spree. This was bad for every subhuman for obvious reasons. The Wizard Guild worked hard to foster peace and tolerance between the subhuman and human communities, and though neither lycans nor vampires exactly liked taking direction from the Guild, it could not be denied they had achieved much in the centuries they’d been at work. They made strides where vampires and lycans could not. Humans responded better to wizards who looked the most human and could be rationalized away as alchemists and eccentric wiccans. If nothing else Harry Potter went a long way towards endearing humans to wizard kind, many humans did not even count wizards as _sub_ human at all anymore.

A rogue could undo everything. When the humans got scared they quickly got violent and there wasn’t much stopping them from hurting the innocent. Things would snowball and once the blood started flowing it was hard to get it to stop. A street war could shatter the fragile peace in this country and return the nation to a hostile zone.

Blaine knew exactly what this meant. They had to hunt this vampire down, whoever they were, and put an end to them. It wasn’t just a vampire problem on this scale, it was a Guild problem. And when the Guild had a problem Ian got involved.

“We’ll be hearing from the Merlin,” he confirmed, a bitter bite to his tone. He couldn’t help his anger at the great wizard, after all the last time he’d seen Ian it was after his trial and a long man hunt. He still couldn’t believe the Merlin of Wizards himself had come out to chase him. Then again the Anderson’s and the Merlin had a long history. Blaine had known Ian since he was a boy, had never been allowed to go a day without understanding his history and his duty; and his own cubs never would as well. Though Blaine sometimes felt he’d be happy never to see the old wizard again he knew that at the end of the day they both fought for the same things.

“He came to see Shelby after the killings started and we’ve got the whole guard out looking for this guy but between you and me most of them are just getting in the way,” Puck growled. “They’re tame. They spend so much time pretending to be human it’s like their wolves have fallen asleep. Sandy couldn’t sniff out danger if it bit him in the ass. He actually asked Shelby if we could carry guns.”

Adam snorted at the absurd idea. That kind of thinking was everything that was wrong with _civilized_ wolves. Only a human or an idiot half asleep would think they’d have enough time to fire a bullet at a vampire.

“Why didn’t Shelby ask for our help sooner?” Blaine asked the biggest question on his mind. When Puck shifted nervously, the vaguest scent of fear beginning to trickle off him, Blaine’s suspicions were confirmed. “Shuester doesn’t want to appear like he can’t control his own territory, which means Shelby didn’t send you at all did she?”

“Alright no she doesn’t know I came,” Puck admitted in an aggravated rush. “But if you ask me she was awfully loud with her _private conference_ with Rachel and I think she knew I’d come to you guys.”

“Why bother with games when we all know sooner or later Ian would pull us in anyway?” Adam asked shrewdly and Blaine’s spine stiffened as Puck’s gaze immediately swept to him. There was something in his eyes, a gravity that settled foreboding over the room like a cloak.

“There’s something she feels I should know isn’t there?” He asked and Puck nodded.

“It’s the nature of the killings themselves. They’re crazy brutal man, not like a typical vampire at all. This guy isn’t just leaching his victims he’s chewing on them.” Puck recounted with a shudder.

“That’s unusual,” Blaine agreed with a frown. “They don’t eat flesh, they can’t even digest it properly. Why would a vampire try and eat their prey when it makes them sick?”

“To send a message,” David answered with cold certainty and Puck blinked at him incredulously, shifting away from the other lycan’s blank eyed gaze.

“Yeah… the way I figure it vampires are leaches, not man eaters, so who do people think chew people up? Us. So they’re trying to get the attention of one of us. ”

“And you have reason to believe Shelby thinks it’s me?” Blaine guessed, the chill in his chest slowly spreading outward.

“It’s where some of the bodies have been found. It might just be coincidence but I think we’re all idiots if we leave anything to chance, and Shelby is no idiot.”

“Where?” Blaine asked, confused but somehow still knowing, gut instinct already pulling him to find Kurt, to make sure that he was close and safe and no harm would come to him.

“Well a body was found right behind Lună Plină for starters—”

“Which is the hottest subhuman club in the whole city, how does that point to Blaine?” Adam interjected.

“It doesn’t. Except another body was found in a random alley, only maybe not so random when you consider it’s the same place Hummel chewed on a vampire girl.”

Blaine’s spine stiffened at this news, his hands tightening on his arms as his body tensed for a fight that hadn’t even come to him yet. Puck was right. There could be no such thing as coincidence right now, not when the stakes were this high, not when Kurt could be involved.

“Where were the other bodies found?” He asked. Puck and Shelby may not know Kurt’s habits but Blaine did. If there really was a pattern to the killings, a pattern that pointed to Kurt being involved somehow, he would know.

“That’s why I wanted to come,” Puck seemed to read his mind. “I figured you’d know this stuff. It’s a long story but I know his step brother Finn. I confirmed that the bar and park where some of the others were killed are near to Hummel’s place. They could be places he frequented pretty regularly.”

“Schiller Park?” Blaine guessed, already knowing even before Puck nodded. It was one of Kurt’s favorite spots, the spot he and Tina liked to sit in on lazy Saturdays while they played catch up, where Blaine had chased ducks in warm weather and rolled in snow.

“Yes, and some coffee shop called—”

“Brewers,” Blaine finished for him and the study fell silent. The pattern couldn’t be argued against. Someone was sending a message to lycans and they were doing it by killing people in places that pointed directly to Kurt Hummel. Puck was right and Shelby was right to worry. These weren’t the attacks of a rabid individual, but a methodical plot aimed directly at Kurt, something the perpetrator knew Blaine would have no choice but to respond to.

“Someone from coven Balaur, retaliation for Kurt’s attack on that girl?” Adam guessed. “Didn’t Balaur agree to a conclave later this month to clear Kurt’s charges? Maybe someone close to her who thinks he’s getting off too easy?”

“Possibly,” Blaine allowed. It was probable actually, the thing that made the most sense, but the uncomfortable reality was he had no way to be sure. No way to be sure it wasn’t a plot cooked up by Balaur himself, a way to appear outwardly forgiving of a crime against one of his own that could justifiably be excused by Kurt’s particular circumstances, while secretly exacting the vengeance he likely craved. When the rogue was caught they’d be punished as an individual and of course Balaur would be surprised that one of his own was behind it. The treaty between their people would remain unbroken as far as anyone was aware. That was politics.

“Or Balaur himself,” Wes echoed his thoughts. “If Balaur is behind this we can’t let him get away with it Blaine. He’s infringing on the treaty and he’ll have to be made to account for it. It’s just useless paper if stuff like this is allowed to go on.”

“It won’t,” Blaine promised. Anger had begun to burn low in his gut, spreading throughout his limbs. He was seeing red, the urge to shift and hunt tingling in his teeth and nails. Someone had taken aim at _Kurt_ , and that was a mistake. Blaine would make sure they knew it too, before it was over. If Balaur was behind this Blaine was going to make an example of him the likes of which no vampire would forget.

“Thank you for bringing this information to us Puck, I know what it will cost you if Shuester finds out. I’m truly grateful this pack can count you as a friend, and you know you are always welcome here, should you ever need it,” he turned to Puck to say and something vulnerable and tender passed through the other man’s gaze before it became guarded again and he responded with a business like nod. Blaine turned to Wes and instructed, “Extend an invitation to our vampire friends in Columbus. I want to move the conclave up. I want Balaur here where I can watch him.”

“Is that safe?” Adam asked even as Wes nodded. “I mean, have you considered Alpha that maybe that’s what Balaur wants? You could be inviting an assassin here and putting Kurt in danger.”

“The danger will persist either way,” David responded coolly. “Here we can watch and be prepared, out there everything is on Balaur’s terms. And I think we all agree Hummel mustn’t be told.”

“Hold on a second you can’t keep Kurt in the dark about this _and_ use him as bait!” Adam insisted and something like guilt niggled at Blaine’s conscience. He was using Kurt as bait wasn’t he? That was wrong, even thinking it made the wolf inside rebel. He must not bring Balaur here. He could not invite danger into his territory and let it near what was _his_ what should be protected at all costs. What kind of an alpha was he if he let Balaur even have a chance at hurting his mate? But above the raw instinct to growl and spit and keep the danger outside of his walls there was a man who could reason, a leader who knew that Kurt could either be Balaur’s bait or Blaine’s, and that only a fool would allow the enemy to choose which.

And there was something about Adam’s tone that made him bristle. Who was Adam to tell him what he could or couldn’t do in regards to Kurt. It wasn’t Adam’s job to protect Kurt it was Blaine’s! Why did Adam think he knew how to protect Kurt better than he did? The thought was irritating, chaffing, and he met the blond with a cool stare as he responded to his protests.

“I don’t take Kurt’s safety lightly, Adam, despite what you might think. I’m aware that Balaur could bring his killer here if he truly is behind all this; but in that case the killings won’t stop until he either is allowed to come to Kurt or he can draw Kurt out of hiding.”

“Look, Blaine, Alpha I mean no disrespect, I just think—”

“I think you’re thinking with something besides your head if it hasn’t occurred to you yet that our enemy has obviously done their research on Kurt. There’s nothing stopping them from targeting Kurt’s family if we delay. What do you think will happen if they start picking off Kurt’s family members next? How safe do you think he’ll be then?”

Blaine was gratified to see Adam go pale at his words. Did Adam actually think the idea of bringing Balaur’s coven into their territory when they most likely wanted nothing more than a chance at hurting Kurt was something he enjoyed? Of course it wasn’t, of course he wanted to do anything else, of course he wanted to growl and howl and become stupid with the need to keep Kurt safe, but he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t play into the enemies hand like that and he couldn’t allow Kurt to do it either. Blaine knew there wasn’t a force on earth that would keep Kurt from getting to his family if he learned they were in danger. The enemy knew could know that too, they had to know exactly what hand they were playing attacking people in places Kurt cared about, and he couldn’t afford to hope they weren’t holding off on targeting Kurt’s family in Lima as a final play.

Puck, who was glancing between the two of them with apprehension, cleared his throat. “Am I dismissed?” He asked uncertainly and Wes nodded with an eye roll towards the ceiling.

“I’d say we’re all dismissed. The way forward is pretty clear and it’s also pretty clear that Blaine and Adam have other things they should probably talk about so we can all think without our egos getting in the way.” Blaine glared at him as Wes rose from his seat and the other’s followed his example. Sometimes Wes and his being right all the time was a real pain in the ass.

“You know I actually _will_ put you on den duty for the rest of forever one of these day?” He grumbled and Wes’s lips twitched in a smirk.

“Of course, Alpha, I don’t know what came over me. The moon is waxing.”

“Yeah I’m sure it’s got you all hot and bothered when we won’t even be able to see it for another night,” he grumbled at his friends back as he, David, and Puck exited the study. He wasn’t unsurprised that Adam lingered behind. As much as Wes was an impertinent thorn in his side, he was also very right. This talk had been a while in coming and they both knew it. The taller lycan cleared his throat and Blaine looked over at him, waiting to see what he would do. The thing he liked (and hated at the moment) about Adam was his forthrightness. What you saw was what you got and he could always be counted on to speak his mind.

“May I speak freely?” Adam began by asking.

“You can always speak freely,” Blaine reminded him. “I told you that.”

“Yeah well, that doesn’t mean it would be wise.” Blaine couldn’t help a bit of a grin at the other man’s response. He did like Adam usually. Usually.

“No. It might not be,” he agreed and Adam’s eyebrows arched. Deciding not to waste any more time Blaine asked him outright, “are you interested in Kurt?” He waited and Adam took his time, thoughts Blaine couldn’t read passing behind his eyes. Never before had he been more tempted to get inside a man’s head, but he knew that would be a misuse of his abilities as the Alpha, so he did the right thing and waited to hear what Adam would say.

“Yes,” he finally answered and Blaine only barely managed not bare his teeth at him. Even though Adam seemed to know he didn’t flinch back, meeting Blaine’s gaze squarely as he said, “I don’t think there’s a point in denying it. He’s gorgeous and smart and is a beta on top of things. I’d have to be brain dead not to want someone I get along well with who would be perfectly matched to me. You know there isn’t an alpha here that wouldn’t mind taking a male for a mate who hasn’t considered him at least in passing. It’s out of deference to you that he isn’t being courted by anyone else.”

Blaine did bare his teeth at that. He did know what Adam was saying was only truth. It didn’t matter what they thought of humans, betas were so rare and so perfectly matched to alphas that they’d all have to be morons to let the fact that Kurt had once been human outright disqualify him as a potential mate.

“Yes well, we all know that courting can get rough. Fights break out, tension gets high, and people can get hurt. Not many wolves relish the thought of competing with their Alpha on anything, let alone a potential mate,” Blaine reminded him. He wondered if Adam was going to be the exception. Was he interested enough to pit himself against his Alpha for Kurt’s favor, even knowing how dangerous it could be, and how unpopular it would make him with the others? Maybe Blaine should be more understanding, he had promised Kurt choices after all, and he had encouraged Adam not to hold back just because Blaine happened to be Alpha-major… But when it came down to it he just couldn’t bring himself to be that damn sacrificing. He was a wolf, not a throw rug, and if Adam wanted to take what was his he was going to know from the beginning that he was going to get bit for his trouble. Excuse him for not caring.

“Are we competing Blaine?” Adam asked and Blaine grinned at him.

“I don’t know, Adam. Are we?”

“I think you should tell Kurt about the attacks. I think he deserves to know,” Adam said and what they both knew he meant was _‘I think you’re doing this wrong. Maybe I could do it better’_.

“I think I made my orders perfectly clear,” Blaine replied, grin turning just a bit shark toothed. “And I _know_ that whatever you might feel for Kurt, you won’t allow it to impair your judgment. I lead this pack and my orders are there to protect the whole, they’re also there to protect Kurt and whether you agree with that or not this is bigger than him, bigger than any of us for that matter.”

“He won’t thank you, Blaine,” Adam reminded him of what Blaine already knew all too well. He understood that, he knew exactly what he was in for when Kurt learned the truth, but this was exactly why Adam could not and would never lead the pack, choices like these. Now he’d made his, the only one he could make, and he’d deal with it. It wasn’t Adam’s place to question it. Adam didn’t understand what was at stake.

“He’s not to know.” Blaine pronounced each word slowly, layering each one with the force of his will and he watched in satisfaction as Adam’s head lowered. “Now if we’re no longer confused on that score let’s be candid about the other. Do you intend to court Kurt?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

That response took the wind right out of Blaine’s sails. Adam looked genuinely torn and Blaine just stared at him incredulously. He’d outright dared the man to do it. Any self-respecting alpha would have felt compelled to meet that challenge if he had even the slightest bit of interest in Kurt, which admittedly was pretty dumb tactically on Blaine’s part but again, a wolf not a throw rug.

“What don’t you know? You said it yourself, he’s amazing and clever and absolutely gorgeous. What exactly is your hang up?” Blaine couldn’t fathom what would make Adam hesitate. Kurt was perfect! Certainly good enough for Adam, and if he couldn’t see what was right in front of his nose then there truly was no hope for him.

“I hope you do see the irony of you all but warning me off him one moment and then becoming indignant at the thought that I might not want him badly enough to get into a pissing contest with you?” Adam murmured and Blaine growled at him.

“Your problem Crawford? I’m still waiting to hear what it is.”

“For starters I don’t know him half as well as you do, and I’d have to be pretty damn sure he’s worth it before I battle my Alpha for him don’t you think?”

“You’ve got my word, Kurt’s worth anything.”

“Well I’m glad I have your vote of confidence Blaine but I like to discover my partners for myself, thanks. Kurt and I might not be right for each other. That does happen with people.”

“Am I to understand that you’re _actually_ asking me to give you enough time to pull your head out of your ass and figure out that there is nobody and nothing half as good as Kurt?”

“No, that would be ridiculous,” Adam retorted with a put upon sigh. “Blaine if he’s the person you seem to think he is you’d be crazy to wait on me to figure that out.”

“At least we agree on that.”

“There’s someone else I have to consider.”

“Who’s that?” Blaine couldn’t for the life of him fathom what next.

“Chandler.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s gotten it into his head that when he passes his majority I’ll court him.”

“Oh…” Blaine flushed, disgruntled at the fact that he’d completely forgotten the attachment Adam’s protégé had formed on him. He was usually so much better at remembering details like that. Why did Kurt make it so hard for him to think properly? “I actually did notice that.”

“People from space noticed that, Blaine” Adam grinned and for the first time since their talk started Blaine shared his amusement. Adam’s predicament was one that Blaine could sympathize with. Being gay limited their choice of mates more than most. Before Kurt, Blaine’s pick of mates had been very slim. Most wolves mated by their age so most of the older members of the pack were already paired. Since so many of the lycans in their age group had lost their lives taking the pack from Blaine’s father, the grim reality was there simply weren’t many options for him and Adam, not if they wanted a mate their own age who actually preferred men like they did.

There were plenty of younger students at the school who were gay and compatible of course, but they were still just children. It was hard to think of them in a romantic light, but practically speaking unless Adam decided to travel to other packs or try and convert someone human, his mate was probably going to be from a younger generation. Kurt was the only reason Blaine was no longer in the same position.

Everyone in the pack knew that the Alpha of Pack Dublin had been hoping that Blaine would take his son Calvin to protégé when he turned thirteen, and that it would result in Blaine eventually taking the boy to mate, which of course would tie their packs together and give Pack Dublin a coveted stake in the Anderson’s affairs.

For the obvious reason that Calvin was only twelve, Blaine had always found the idea pretty distasteful, too much like an arranged marriage for his comfort level; but the age difference between Chandler and Adam wasn’t quite as great and there was genuine affection between them without any of the messy politics to be considered.

“And what do you feel about that?” Blaine asked gently, determined to put their rivalry aside and behave like a leader with Chandler’s and Adam’s best interests at heart.

“Conflicted?” Adam replied honestly. “I care for him, but he’s seventeen and I’m a grown man. He’s my protégé, Blaine, it’s hard to think of him as anything but a little brother. But I know him, I know how set he is on me and he won’t take the rejection well. I want a partner as much as you do Blaine, as much as anyone. I’m tired of going to bed alone. I want someone to share my life with, someone to have my cubs with, and I’d prefer it not be a boy with hero worship in his eyes. But I wonder if that’s not the most attractive thing to me about Kurt, how idea he is, and if that’s enough to build a life on.”

“It’s not,” Blaine answered, and because he really did have their best interests at heart he added, “but you can’t know how you do or don’t feel about Kurt unless you give yourself permission to figure it out. I’d also point out that Chandler might not be a full-fledged adult but he’s seventeen. You trust him with adult tasks every day. You trust him with the lives of others when you place him on assignment don’t you?” When Adam nodded slowly Blaine continued. “Then it makes no sense not to trust that he can’t know his own mind. I’m not giving you permission to behave inappropriately with your protégé; obviously he’s off limits till he passes his trials. I’m just saying you shouldn’t write him off as a child out of hand. It’s not fair to either of you. It might mean waiting some more but it could be worth the wait. Again, you won’t know unless you give yourself permission to figure it out.”

“And if I decide to figure out if Kurt and I could have something real?” Adam asked with a quirk of his brow.

“Then I suggest you be upfront with your protégé, who will have to handle rejection like the adult he’s trying to be, and prepare yourself to have a sore ass because I’ll kick it, respectfully and with no hard feelings after I win.” Adam actually barked with laughter at Blaine’s response and Blaine bit back a grin. He might not want to bite Adam quite as much as he had a minute ago but the man was a fool if he didn’t think Blaine was a hundred percent serious. “I don’t have anything to figure out, Crawford. Kurt’s my one, and I’m not just going to hand him over to you.”

“Fair enough. You wouldn’t deserve him if you did.”

“You know Kurt would say neither of us deserves him,” Blaine mused. “I’m pretty sure he’d hate everything about this conversation.”

“Well I’m glad we had it anyway. It would serve us right though, if he ran off with someone else.”

“No,” Blaine shook his head. “Knowing Kurt he’d stick it to everyone and decide he was going to be a lone wolf, just to prove we’re both cavemen and should probably enter the twenty first century. Not a prize to be won and all that.”

“You sound proud of that. Most alpha’s would call that a handful.” Adam remarked with an inquisitive tilt of his head and Blaine shrugged unable to tamp down the warmth welling up in his chest.

“Well he is, and I am, and maybe we _do_ need to come out of the stone age. It’s a thought.”

Adam chuckled and nodded slightly as he agreed, “it’s a thought.”

TBC.


	15. Boy King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt is on the cusp of some pretty major decisions. Will learning Blaine's history help him decide what he wants is in Westerville or send him running for the hills?

Kurt woke the morning after new moon and took his time getting dressed. During his initial shopping trip for necessities he’d picked up enough of his favorite gels, sprays, and creams to do himself up properly, only to have to go on a search for a whole new line of organic cosmetics because he’d discovered the hard way that in reality shifting shape wasn’t like in a movie. Everything had to _go_ somewhere else, and bacteria and chemicals that were fine sitting on the outside didn’t fare so well when they got mixed up with his insides. He’d read in one of the journals Blaine had given him that lycan bodies were particularly adept at rejecting foreign toxins, even more so than the human body, which was helpful in the event that something foreign got in the bloodstream. So while extra hold hairspray wasn’t lethal, it had made Kurt break out in a fever sweat and an uncomfortable rash all over his skin the first and only time he’d worn it before a shift.

Freshly made up with all natural beauty products Kurt made his way to the Anderson house that morning with trepidation. He wasn’t looking forward to the talk he knew he had to have with Blaine, but he was distracted from it upon entering the house that morning discovering it had become a beehive of activity. Typically the service staff flitted about behind the scenes like ghosts, happy to stay out of the way and see to the smooth running of house and school without being seen or heard as much as they were able. This morning they were out in full force, dusting and sweeping, shining brass and silver and shifting furniture as they conversed quietly in hushed whispers. The whispers were the most unsettling bit, the foreboding feeling they gave each room only intensifying as one by one they caught sight of him and fell even more hushed.

Kurt learned why once he reached the dining hall.

The conclave Blaine had arranged with the coven of the girl he’d attacked had been moved up. They were arriving next week instead of the following and instead of meeting somewhere in town Blaine had invited Balaur and his companions to stay at the house. It would be the first time vampires had ever been invited in the forest, let alone the Anderson house, a fact that Headmaster strand was quick to bring up as soon as Blaine’s announcement had settled in everyone’s ears.

“Never have there been vampires here!” Harvey demanded incredulously. “Alpha, forgive me but I have to remind you but this coven has hurt us deeply before. Now you invite them here for the sake a convert who is not even _pack_?!”

“I don’t like it either Harvey,” Blaine sighed, rubbing at one temple as he looked toward the irate alpha. “But Kurt is my protégé, which affords him the same protection as any student at Dalton, all of whom, may I remind you, are not technically sworn to the pack either.”

“They at least are lycan,” Flint muttered from down the table and Kurt tightened his hand on his fork. He looked up when Flint raised his voice to Blaine, “Alpha the students at Dalton are true wolves, born to our brothering packs. They share our interests. Kurt does not. _Kurt_ would dance a jig on our graves if one of those leaches killed us all in our beds!”

“I don’t think Kurt has danced a _jig_ since high school and he’s not likely to do it anytime soon, let alone over anyone’s grave,” Kurt muttered in reply. He paused as he raised a slice of the much too red breakfast steak on his plate towards his lips and added, “In case anyone cared to know what Kurt thinks.”

There was no love lost between Kurt, the Headmaster, or the small band of alphas he’d collected to himself in mutual hatred of all things Kurt, but it gratified him to see the evidence of the slowly changing attitudes in the rest of the inner guard. It wasn’t just Blaine or Allie and Quinn who looked exasperated. Adam’s mouth had tucked up into a grin as soon as Kurt had spoken up, Jeff and Chandler were openly glaring at Flint, and even though their alpha-masters were inclined to side with him and the Headmaster, Kitty and Joe looked distinctly uncomfortable with the brewing confrontation. It was nothing to shout about, but it was definitely better than having all of them glaring at him demanding to know how he could lock their Alpha up and call himself worthy to keep breathing.

“So you’ve discovered some great love for wolf-kind have you?” Harmony, Kitty’s alpha-master, demanded to know. “You’re not just spending our resources and wasting our Alpha’s time waiting for the first chance to go running back to your own kind?”

That stung if he was honest, because he did feel guilty spending money that the pack had earned together and he couldn’t deny that he still wanted more than anything to get back to his life, but there was nothing wrong with taking a gift when it was offered or for wanting a different life. He wouldn’t let Strand and his cronies make him feel like there was.

“If you’re asking me if I’ve decided to put up a for sale sign in Columbus and shack up in Annhurst till I have one of those graves Flint thinks I dance over when I’m feeling spiteful, the answer is no.”

Flint let out a loud derisive snort in response.

“Because it’s not good enough for you is it? Not good enough that we welcome you into our home, feed and clothe you, that the alpha of _the_ most important pack in our world lowers himself to court you—” Kurt felt Blaine’s anger swelling up with his like they were one and the same but his tongue was quicker than Blaine’s, his gums suddenly heavy with the need to extend his teeth, every limb tingling and eager for a shift.

“That’s enough!” His voice cracked out over the table and to his utter shock Flint winced back like he’d been lashed with a whip. Kurt didn’t let his surprise stop him for more than a moment however. “Don’t talk about me like that, and don’t you dare talk about Blaine like that either and then _sit_ there pretending like you have any respect for him because you’re a liar! The only person _lowering_ himself at this table is you, and the idea that I’ve been welcomed here by you of all people is a joke!” There was something strange happening to his voice, happening to him, as he looked around the table and met the stupefied gazes of those gathered there. His throat ached as if the words were too large to be pushed out of him without effort, there was a deep and resonate echo in his ears as if he was shouting from the bottom of a well and with each word uttered he felt the pressure in the room increase, as if an invisible hand were hovering over them all and pressing down.

It was the scariest and most exhilarating thing he’d ever felt, ever done, and he knew without a doubt that it was coming from him. He was the one exerting such control over the room, fed by the fire of his and Blaine’s combined anger. This was Alpha control, this was _Blaine’s_ ability and now they were sharing it together. It was like when he got to drive for the first time, sitting in his father’s lap because his feet couldn’t reach the pedals. His father’s hands had been over his but then for the briefest moment they were gone, and beneath Kurt’s hands had been over a hundred pounds of roaring energy and a seemingly infinite number of possibilities.

This moment was like flying.

“ _He_ is your Alpha! _I_ am not going to sit around and let you insult either of us. So until _Blaine_ and _I_ decide what is happening in _our_ relationship it looks like I’m here. I’m here, it’s happening, and I’d suggest you get used to it by the time I’m done talking or you better get ready to fight because you don’t know me, you don’t speak for me, and I’m done! Done, understand? Now does anybody here have a problem with that?!” Kurt finished on a bark, his throat aching as the words tore out him, swaying with dizziness as the pressure in his skull increased with each lingering echo.

What the hell was that? What the hell had he just done? He was going to pass out he felt so suddenly as if his brain was expanding too large for his head. He might have actually dropped to the floor if not for Blaine reaching to catch him. He only realized that Quinn had rushed to his side too because her perfume became so strong in his nose. Blaine’s hands felt warm where he held Kurt and for some reason Kurt wanted to just start smiling stupidly and nuzzle him. He was saved from that embarrassment by Flint standing, his vice wringing out over the dining hall with indignant fury, “I do!”

By the way the room held its breath Kurt knew that was bad. By the way Blaine gripped him too tightly and his voice cut like knives as he replied to Flint Kurt knew it was probably worse than he could even imagine.

“Sit down.”

The tension in the room only escalated when Flint did not sit.

“If it’s disrespect not to want to see you with this human then so be it,” the man bit out in return. “He comes in here a stranger with no love for any of us, brings our enemies to our doorstep. He makes a fool out of you, daring to flaunt his hold on you by sharing with you what rightfully belongs to your mate. All while refusing to make any commitment to you. He’s proud of it Blaine! He thinks it’s his right to deny you when—”

“It _is_ his right to deny me, Flint!” Blaine thundered and flint shouted right back.

“And it’s my right to answer his challenge! He wants to talk like he’s got rank here then let him live up to it. I’m challenging his authority!”

“How about mine?” Blaine asked, his voice still so sharp in Kurt’s ears he didn’t know why Flint wasn’t bleeding. “Are you going to challenge my authority?”

“No Alpha…” Flint swallowed thickly and Kurt hoped that would be the end of it but then the insubordinate alpha looked to his friends at the table who were looking back to him, their spines stiffened and their heads nodding, and Flint straightened his back and finished with renewed determination, “But I have spilled my blood for this pack and earned my rank. What has he done? He has no right to speak to me or anyone else here with your authority and you shame your future mate giving it to him.”

Kurt whimpered as the tension in the room peaked and the pressure in his skill exploded. He could feel the others in sudden waves, their shock at Flint’s daring, their anger at his gall to speak so to the alpha, their mixed guilt at the truth of what he said, their irritation with being dominated by a green convert who didn’t even want to be a wolf. Kurt felt all of them like they were pulsing beneath his skin and his head just wouldn’t stop spinning. There were too many voices, too many souls in his chest—he needed to claw them all out, make the world go cool and still again, and he thrashed in Blaine’s arms.

“Blaine,” he heard Quinn snap. “You need to close him out of your head.”

Blaine was suddenly absent, leaving something unfathomably empty behind, but with his departure so too went everyone else and Kurt could have cried in relief, slumping back into his chair with Quinn holding him up. Blaine brushed Kurt’s sweat plastered hair off his brow, the touch tender with apology before he addressed the silent dining hall.

“You are within your rights to challenge him for supremacy.” Raising his voice he then declared, “What I want everyone here to hear is this. I was careless with my anger; I allowed our minds to become too close. Kurt spoke with the authority I _gave_ him because he is in my heart my mate. That’s the way it is. So if you hate him, you hate the both of us, if you hurt him, you hurt the both of us, and if you challenge his place here you challenge our bond and my judgment as your leader.” Zeroing in on Flint Blaine then growled, “He is a protégé! He cannot be held accountable for mistakes like these and you _know_ it Flint, but if his speaking out of rank so offended your pride, you are more than welcome to accept his challenge and as his alpha-master I will stand in for him.”

“I’ll second him!” Chandler stood to say and rolling his eyes Adam yanked him back in his seat muttering, “Sit down, pup. You’re a protégé yourself, you can’t be a second.”

“I’ll second Blaine,” Wes announced in quick succession with a hard stare in Flint’s direction.

“I didn’t know you supported protégés pulling rank on seasoned alphas Wesley,” Headmaster Strand sneered and Wes turned his gaze to the older alpha.

“I support my Alpha and his choice of mate. That and I don’t believe in subjecting protégés to trial by combat for innocent mistakes.”

“Oh come on!” Flint demanded of them all. “He’s one of _them_! There’s nothing innocent about him. Who will second me?”

Kurt watched in fearful silence, breathing heavily as he suffered through the dull ache in his skull that refused to abate, waiting to see who else wanted to see him gone so badly they’d be willing to fight Blaine over it. Flint looked pleadingly around the table but one by one his comrades in the inner guard lowered their eyes. Flint had dug his own grave it seemed. Kurt almost felt bad for him, knowing that after this display and the things he’d said Blaine would not be quick to forgive. Infuriated Flint spat.

“Cowards! Are none of you brave enough to stand up for the pack?”

“Give it a rest Wilson, you’re out of line!” Mitchell finally barked and the blond alpha blinked at him in shock. Gesturing around the table Mitchell continued gruffly with a wave of his fork, “We’ve not been very welcoming, that’s just fact right? Kid would hardly be worth anything if he just rolled over and took it. Frankly I’m glad Blaine’s chosen has some back bone, even if he is a convert. Kurt’s right, far as I see it he is the one our alpha has chosen so we might as well accept it. I’m not going against my alpha. Are you?”

Flint swallowed thickly, his eyes darting fearfully to Blaine who hadn’t said a word, who was just watching and waiting in furious silence as he gently stroked Kurt’s brow. The touch didn’t actually cure his raging headache but it was warm and soothing, just as being near to Blaine always was.

“Fine then,” Flint groused through gritted teeth. “I shall meet you without a second.”

This time when shock rippled over the others, Kurt didn’t feel it at all.

-*-*-

Since taking the house on Cherry Drive Blaine had been imagining the day Kurt returned to his bed, but in his imaginings he usually wasn’t so pale and he hadn’t had Blaine’s power go coursing through his system like lightening either. With the challenge thrown and accepted Quinn had taken charge and all but ordered Blaine to carry Kurt to the clinic. She’d poked and prodded and hummed over xrays of his skull for a good hour before declaring him healthy but for a slight concussion. She’d then released him to monitored bed rest with strict instructions not to let him get up till he was checked again and given a clean bill of health.

Blaine lay in the bed next to him, watching his chest rise and fall as he slept, still smarting with guilt. He was the reason Kurt was lying in his bed looking half baked. He’d been so angry, so hurt by the things Flint had said, so enraged that anyone dared talk about Kurt that way and hurt him with such ugly words. And he’d felt Kurt there in his mind, always the softest of touches across their bond, and he’d reached for him, pulled him all the way in without even thinking about the consequences. Kurt had just felt like he belonged, like the only way they should ever be was united.

“You’re thinking too loud.” Kurt’s muffled groan took him by surprise. The brunette sighed and turned in the bed, blinking exhaustion from his eyes to stare at him.

“I’m sorry,” Blaine quickly apologized. “Am I too close again?” He put more distance between their minds and jumped when Kurt’s hand flew out to grip his arm and the taller man’s body curled into his with a soft whine.

“Don’t. I don’t like it when you’re not there.” He didn’t release the tension in his body until he felt the feather light touch of Blaine’s mind against his, impressions of his emotions trickling across their bond. He smiled tiredly into Blaine’s shoulder. “There. That’s better. Not like before.”

“I’m so sorry, Kurt, about before.”

“Is it always like that?”

“Alpha control?”

“mmm-hmm”

“Sometimes. Depends on how deep I’m going. It can be as light as this.” Kurt grinned as Blaine sent the suggestion of phantom kisses across his skin, knowing the suggestion was light enough to give Kurt the feeling of having had lips brushing across his neck only moments before, like a keen memory. “Or as deep as you felt it before, deeper even, much deeper. I’m sorry you experienced that without any sort of prep. I’ve been conditioned to it but I know how intense it can be starting out.”

“That was…” Kurt faltered for words. “Blaine it was like having a galaxy inside my head. And they are always there? You can touch any one of them at any moment?” As Blaine nodded Kurt shook his head in bafflement. “How do you cope? How do _they_ cope knowing you can do that? Blaine you could do so much bad with that I can’t even…”

“And a lot of good,” Blaine needed to remind them both. “My father, Kurt, he did a lot of bad. He broke a lot of trust. I guess that has made me more lenient as an Alpha, I give them more freedom than many would. My father would have killed Flint today for the things he said.” Sometimes he worried he wasn’t doing this right. Sometimes Blaine still heard his father’s voice calling him weak, telling him that he’d never be an effective leader until he demanded respect and made examples out of the disobedient. He didn’t want to be cruel, he didn’t want to _force_ anyone but this wasn’t working either. He wasn’t a fool. He could hear the grumbling among the elders about his youth, about his mistakes with David, about his choice of mate, and Flint wouldn’t be the last to openly challenge him. Not at this rate, but he didn’t know what else to do besides let them grumble. He didn’t feel right punishing people for being people. He wanted to earn their respect, not take it.

“I’m glad you’re not your father,” Kurt’s voice broke him out of his thoughts and the words sent warmth curling through him. At his questioning look Kurt reached to grip Blaine’s shoulder with one hand, tentatively brushed Blaine’s brow with the other. “And if they’re smart they’re glad too. God I wish they knew…”

“Kurt?” Blaine’s heart had begun to pound hard in his chest as Kurt shifted nearer. The heat of his breath washed over him and the nearness of his lips teased Blaine’s self-control. Kurt looked at him, the wolf behind his eyes, and for the first time Blaine could remember the wolf and the man were one and the same, united in purpose. 

“I wish they knew how beautiful you are,” Kurt whispered, his lips tickling the shell of Blaine’s ear. “I could see you too, Blaine, see inside you. I’ve never seen anything as clearly as I saw you. You’re beautiful.” Blaine held himself utterly still, so still he barely allowed himself to breathe, every bit of him that wasn’t focused on the heat and scent of Kurt surrounding him was focused on restraint because he _could_ not take advantage of Kurt when he was concussed. He would not! Wouldn’t he?

“Kurt?” He asked again, hating how uncertain he sounded. He wasn’t uncertain. Kurt’s brain was scrambled; of course he was more susceptible to the bond right now. Of course he was leaning on it for comfort and equilibrium, that’s what it was for. Blaine would be such an asshole if _now_ was the moment he chose to lose it. But the bond was there because they’d forged it together; because Kurt _cared_ , because he trusted and loved and _wanted_ Blaine. Kurt was only doing what he wanted at his most basic so it wouldn’t really be taking advantage would it? Wasn’t this _actually_ Kurt at his clearest and truest when you thought about it? It was Kurt without all the worry and second guessing, Kurt with no barriers and nothing to hide behind, Kurt with no reason at all to hesitate.

He didn’t. At the questions in Blaine’s voice Kurt seemed to make a decision. A concussed, emotionally compromised, decision Blaine tried to remind himself as Kurt pressed their lips together. Blaine kept his mouth clamped shut despite how desperately he wanted to open it and let the tongue he felt stroking his bottom lip slip inside, shivering violently as Kurt moved to straddle him. He was going to die he decided. If there was a god he must hate him because Kurt Hummel had been crafted solely to be the death of him.

Kurt chuckled low, and Blaine realized through the fog in it that his thoughts were leaking out of his head again. He stopped caring when Kurt kissed him again, this time a chastising little growl escaping him when Blaine’s lips remained tightly shut. He sucked against the bottom of Blaine’s mouth in retaliation, nibbling at his bottom lip in a somewhat scolding fashion before he withdrew.

“I want to sleep with you,” he announced without preamble and Blaine would have fallen had he been standing up.

“Excuse me what?”

“On the full moon,” Kurt clarified. “I’ve been thinking about it. I can either enjoy it with someone or suffer through it locked up in my house. Lina says that it’s awful, says she wouldn’t wish being locked inside on the full moon on her worst enemy.” As if Blaine’s no doubt dumb expression was too adorable for him to resist Kurt grinned and kissed him again, this time peppering soft kisses across his jaw and down his neck. Blaine had been half hard since Kurt moved on top of him and he was fast making up the difference as Kurt sucked lightly at the skin below his jaw. He gasped as Kurt lowered himself and brought their groins together with about the filthiest little moan Blaine had ever heard.

“Yeah I’d rather do this,” Kurt panted with a wild grin. He shifted his hips, the drag slow and indulgent, and Blaine had to shut his eyes because there were stars exploding behind his eyelids. “Can we please? Without bonding? I’m not ready for that yet but god, I want this. I want you, Blaine. You can have me too if you want.”

Oh Christ. He must have been some sort of tyrant in a past life. That must be it. This was purgatory. This was torture for all his past misdeeds, this was so very good and that breathy whine Kurt made when Blaine lifted his hips should be wrung out of him again and again, that was just a _thing_ that should always be in his ears. His lips weren’t shut anymore. He didn’t know when he’d started kissing Kurt, when his tongue had invaded the heat of his mouth, when his hands had gripped Kurt’s hips and when he’d taken control of their movement, driving the both of them crazy with too little friction and greedily swallowing Kurt’s needy moan.

“Blaine, please.”

“Please what?”

“ _Please_.” Please fuck me, dominate me, own me. In that please was everything. It was gorgeous. It was a sweet benediction, heady as worship while somehow also being as harsh and unyielding as a slave masters whip. It cracked through him hot and wonderful, and Blaine knew he didn’t have the will not to comply. He’d never been such a prisoner to anything as much as he was to Kurt and his fulfillment; he wouldn’t change a thing. He felt like he’d found the meaning of his existence in the violent shudder of Kurt’s body as they flipped positions, never felt as if he knew himself and his place in the world so much as he did with Kurt’s arms wrapped around him and his head thrown back to offer up the point where his life pulsed strongest. Penetrating that point, burying himself inside where Kurt was most alive, that was the reason he’d been born. No one but him was allowed in that stream. He’d told Kurt he would have a choice but here the words lost their meaning. There was no choice about it when his lips touched the flutter of his pulse; they had been born to each other, to be _meant_ and there could only be choices with alternatives.

Blaine growled at the unseen, at the washed away faces of all those that stood between them and touched his tongue to Kurt’s bonding point, reveling at the rapid thrumming of his heart against it. No more alternatives.

“Mine.” He nipped the sensitive skin and Kurt gasped, arching up into him.

“Yes,” he agreed, grinding helplessly against him. “Please, Blaine, yes.”

“Then I think…” Blaine dragged his tongue over Kurt’s pulse again grinning at the way he tensed and shuddered. “We had better practice. Because if you’re this wild for it, god Baby if you’re this gorgeous on the full moon I’ll take you. Do you want that Kurt?” Because he wanted it. Blaine wanted it so bad he growled with hunger, dipping his head lower than he wanted and biting hard. It wasn’t hard enough to break skin, wasn’t high enough on his neck, but it was close so very close.

“Fuck! _Yes_ I want…” _Yes yes yesyesyes_. Kurt’s shout rang in his ears, his thoughts peeled through Blaine’s mind like bells, every nerve ending in his long lean body electrifying in anticipation as he strained in Blaine’s hold, presenting himself for the bite.

And this is why he couldn’t have sex with Kurt yet. Blaine groaned in frustration and dove in for another kiss just so he wouldn’t bite. God the need to bite was so strong. Kurt was his. Kurt should be claimed. Kurt wanted to be claimed! But he didn’t, not really, and so Blaine kissed him with every last bit of ferocity in him, biting at his lips and sucking at his tongue in some strange mix of penance and retribution. Kurt took it all, greedy for it, whimpering when Blaine finally mustered the will to roll away from him.

“Blaine? Touch me.”

“No.”

“Please?!”

“Kurt if you ask me that tomorrow morning with a clear head I’ll fuck you till you can’t stand.” Kurt’s eyes widened at his words and the way his tongue darted out to lick his lips, like he was hungry for it, had Blaine hastily struggling out of the bed because he was going to lose it in about three seconds if Kurt kept looking at him like that. “But we both know you won’t, so I should… I should go now.” He began striding for the door but Kurt’s next words stopped him dead in his tracks.

“So you want me to find someone else?” Blaine turned to him, turned to see him still lying on the bed, still spread for him, his body still running hot and sweat still curling the hair clinging to his brow. “Is that what you want?” Blaine watched helplessly as Kurt lifted his shirt over his head, freeing his flushed skin to be cooled by the slight breeze coming in from the open window. He was still panting slightly his chest rising and falling rapidly as he spread his arms out over Blaine’s side of the bed, as if he was so desperate he was just going to roll around in the heat Blaine had left there. The sound he made when he pressed his face against Blaine’s pillow, when he dragged the scent of him into his nose and just moaned quiet and low, it wasn’t _fair_.

“No.” Blaine growled, marching back to the bed, leaning over Kurt and caging him within his arms. “You offered to me. I said yes. You’re mine. None of them get to touch you.” Kurt nodded in wordless compliance leaning up to press a calming kiss against Blaine’s shoulder and Blaine shivered.

“I only want you,” Kurt murmured. “Please touch me.”

“I will, just not now. I can’t. We’re going to practice. We can’t just jump into bed and rely on me being able to say no to you because in case you haven’t noticed I’m not very good at it. You want it Kurt. You know it, I know it, and I can’t… I can barely remember why I haven’t just done it yet.”

“Neither can I,” Kurt admitted softly. “I’ve never felt as close to anyone as I do you. I’ve never trusted anyone with this much of me before. I don’t know what that means and it scares me.”

It means you love me, Blaine wanted to answer for him but that wasn’t what Kurt needed. Kurt had snapped that morning because he was tired of people answering for him. So Blaine just pressed a kiss to his temple and straightened up.

“It’s okay to want more than one thing Kurt, but in this case there’s no easy compromise. You will have to decide what you want more and as I told someone else not too long ago, you won’t know till you give yourself permission to figure it out.”

“Practice you mean?” Kurt asked, tilting his head in consideration. Blaine grinned down at him and nodded.

“We’ll go slowly. No more treating each other like forbidden fruit. There shouldn’t be anything forbidden between us. I think I’ve done you a disservice holding you at arm’s length. I was trying to give you choices, like you asked, but I realized today that you can’t choose what you don’t know.”

“I know you Blaine.”

“You know me better than anyone else, but you don’t know _me_ yet Kurt and that’s my fault. You know when I was a cub my favorite thing was yarn balls?” At Kurt’s incredulous expression Blaine nodded, eager now to share the stories, to share everything and every last bit of himself with Kurt. “Yeah my brother Cooper had me convinced for weeks I was going to turn into a cat and some human would come along and drown me in a sack.” Kurt snorted through a laugh and Blaine shook his head ruefully at the memory. “You don’t know any of their names, my brothers, my baby sisters and the mother I barely remember. You don’t know my favorite spot in the forest—it’s pride rock. Coop and I named it after the rock in the Lion King. That’s my favorite movie by the way. I didn’t see a ton of them growing up but I saw that one and I get Simba, you know, we have a deep connection.”

He was babbling he knew but he’d promised Kurt once before that he would let him in and he hadn’t delivered on that promise. So he would now. He’d show Kurt everything, tell him everything, because Kurt wasn’t just mating with the Alpha of pack Westerville he was mating with Blaine; Blaine who had collected Jedi-Apprentice novels as student and had a copy of The Lion King on DVD that he couldn’t wait to sit down with his own cubs and watch, because they would _get_ it and maybe it would make the weight of their responsibility easier to bear.

Kurt just listened to him babble on, his expression going softer the more random things Blaine spilled about himself, until finally he reached for his hand and patted the empty space beside him on the bed. Blaine slipped back into the space beside him and breathed a tiny breath of relief that Kurt seemed calmer now, clearer in the eyes as they twinkled and he chuckled at the image of Blaine locking up an Anniversary edition of the Lion King in his vault like it was actual treasure.

“That actually makes perfect sense to me. Were you the boy who wanted to be a mighty king, Blaine?”

“Well, that was more Cooper.” Blaine admitted. “He was older so I didn’t actually think I’d be Apha one day but he always really resented being third born. Christian was oldest and then Conner, Coop, me, and the girls. All of us, we knew what we were born into. We had a duty to protect the line, to be father’s hands, to see to the future of the pack and the protection of its interests… That’s the Anderson motto, protect the crown. We had to be prepared to take it up when the others fell.”

“And when you have a child, that’s the way it will be for them. That’s a lot of responsibility on a kid’s shoulders.” Kurt said and Blaine knew he wasn’t just thinking abstractly. He was thinking about them, about the children they would have to have if they mated, the children who were only now vague imaginings but might one day be living beings, people who may not fare so well with burdens they hadn’t asked for.

“It is. It was.” Blaine bit his lip, weighing the cost of keeping secrets versus keeping Kurt and deciding that come good or evil he had to put it all on the table, he had to trust Kurt with who he was if he was going to ask Kurt to give him everything _he_ was. “But it’s the way it has to be, because we’re guarding something, the Anderson’s I mean.” He waited as Kurt took in his words, wondering what Kurt would do with the tiny gem of information. Where would Kurt take them from here? Was he willing to get closer to Blaine’s world? Did he even want to?

“Does this have something to do with how your family came here and why an Anderson must always be Alpha?” Kurt asked carefully. “You told me it was a long story, and that you’d tell it to me someday if I wanted to hear it.”

Yes, Blaine remembered. He had said that. His family’s secrets had been kept for centuries. When he had first held the crown Ian had made him take vows of secrecy, the only person he was allowed to share the full extent of his knowledge with was his mate, because his mate would have to share his mind and his burdens. It was possible the spells Ian had cast over him would prevent him from telling Kurt, but Blaine suspected that if their bond was as strong as it felt it wouldn’t matter. A true mate wasn’t just a mate because of a bite, there was so much more to it. Kurt had held Blaine’s power inside him today and used it as only his mate could. The bond was strong enough. Now all that was left was to take the risk.

“Do you want me to tell it to you?” He asked and then he waited because he was asking for so much more than for Kurt to hear a story. He was inviting Kurt into the heart of who he was, _what_ he was, and trusting him with things that could mean the lives of many. He’d been carrying it alone since his coronation and he would carry it alone until he died with the knowledge that it was all ending with him, the last of his line, if he lost Kurt. Waiting felt like sitting on a bed of knives.

“I think so,” Kurt finally answered and everything in Blaine’s chest swelled. Kurt took his hand in his and squeezed his eyes just a bit too wide with fear. “God I actually think I do. Let’s hope it’s good huh?”

“It’s the best sort of story, it’s got the Merlin in it and—”

“Merlin?” One of Kurt’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “As in King Arthur’s Merlin?”

“There’s only one Merlin.” Blaine grinned. “Though your storytellers got his name and his office confused. The Merlin is his title. If Wizard’s have a king he’s it. He’s the greatest wizard that ever lived, not to mention the oldest. His name is actually Ian though.”

“Wait a minute, Ian? The same wizard who turned you into a dog Ian?!” Kurt gaped and when Blaine nodded he shook his head like someone had held it under water. “Merlin turned my best friend into a dog… I _met_ my best friend because Merlin turned him into a dog! That’s just… it never ends with you people does it?” Blaine shrugged in response.

“Legends come from somewhere Kurt. Stories are nothing but somebody’s version of history.”

“And you’re going to tell me yours?”

“Yes. If you want it, Kurt, it’s yours.” I’m yours, went unsaid but not unheard. Kurt swallowed thickly.

“I do, but Blaine I can’t promise you forever…yet. So, I understand if there are things I can’t know about you. You don’t have to…” Kurt fell silent as Blaine cupped his jaw in one hand and slowly pressed their lips together. Kurt shivered at the gentle brush of Blaine’s tongue against the seam of his lips and Blaine smiled into the kiss. When he withdrew Kurt was gazing at him with yearning and something like wonder.

“It’s yours.”

-*-*-

_Long ago, in the age that men call dark, there was a Lord called Gorlois who lived during the reign of Uther, King of a warrior clan who called themselves Pendragon. It was said by men that Uther of Pendragon was not only a mad king but one of the desecrated—a man who had sold his soul to the wolf god to become a demon to inherit unholy powers. Men looked to Uther Pendragon as a plague, for her swept through lands to claim new territory and left devastation in his wake. Long had Gorlois fought to free the people of the red banners that heralded the claim of Uther, for men did not fare well under his rein and it was said that wherever he went the rivers ran red with the blood of the innocent whose flesh he fed upon._

_It came to be that Gorlois sought an alliance with a neighboring realm and agreed to take to wife the lady Igraine, daughter of King Bertanand Mac Murchadha in hopes that the old king would aide him in his quest to overthrow his king. Uther, hearing of this alliance, set out to kill the noblemen’s bride before the marriage could take place, thus ending the alliance and sending a message to all who would defy him. He waylaid her and her retinue, hoping to slay Gorlois’s betrothed before she could reach his keep, but the lady Igraine was resourceful and brave having dressed herself and all but one of her handmaids in sensible garb, nothing to distinguish a lady from a service woman, and fled with them into the wood at the first return of a scout with ill news. She left behind Pala, the most loyal of her friends, dressed in riches from her own trunks and the two friends wept bitterly for they knew they would never see one another again._

_Uther quickly overtook the knights set to protect the lady as she traveled and even faster slew the woman he found in the coach dressed in a lady’s riches but he could smell that there had been other women present, hand-maids no doubt, who had fled before his arrival. Wanting to leave nothing to chance he pursued the lady Igraine and her party, thinking to do away with them quickly and return to his castle and the warmth of his own fire, but the lady was canny and careful using many tricks to elude him. It was said that Uther could sniff out his prey like a hound so she and all her women rubbed their skin in the pungent oil of caper berries and they traveled though the shallowest parts of the river by day and slept along its banks by night though it made their journey twice as long and none of them were great swimmers._

_When fate was against them and a pair of Uther’s men chanced upon them, she ordered her women into the deep of the river where it was swift and cruel but sure to carry them to Gorlois’s keep, with orders to bring help back with them. They had prepared for the event of being found, finding a log buoyant enough to float and long enough for the three of them to cling to. But she herself did not join them despite their protests, instead taking up her long knife and standing guard long enough to assure that her women could drag their heavy burden to the center of the wide river, fighting off the first man of Uther’s who was brave enough to venture into the water. Though she killed the one and wounded the other, when Uther himself arrived with more of his men she knew she could not evade death if she stood to fight and preferred instead to take her chances in the river._

_She turned and fled for the center, struggling through the muck of mud and bramble on the river’s bank to reach the strongest part of the currant. But the river was no kinder to her than Uther might have been, grasping her frail body and dragging her down its traitorous path, seeking to drown her or dash her body against the rocks at every turn, seemingly with a conscious will. Igraine thought fearfully of her women and hoped that they had fared better on their log, expecting that she would die there but happy at least to have done it on her own terms._

_But the lady did not die that day, for a wolf appeared like a creature out of myth, massive and white as the purest of snows, to battle the current and then her frightened attempts to escape it to drag her to safety on the other side of the river bank. That was how the lady Igraine discovered that her enemy did indeed have the spirit of a wolf, but Uther looked no demon to her that day on the river bank. He looked wet and wretched, bloodied with an injury he’d received preserving her life. An act he could not explain to himself after, nor to the men he had left across the river who had now become wolves themselves and were howling desperately at their king’s plight._

_The king did not look to be the evil creature she knew he was, the hide of a beautiful and noble animal cloaking the beast she knew him to be within. But though she still had her long knife, and though she griped it in shaking hand with the intent to end the threat to her own life and the suffering of her people, she could not look away from his golden eyes; nor could she kill without answers._

_“Why did you save me? Why hunt me to kill me and then save me from the river?”_

_The wolf did not speak with lips and tongue but she heard Uther’s voice in her mind as if his thoughts had always had a home there._

_“You fought as if you were she-wolf. I have never known a human woman to do that before.”_

_“Then you must not know many women. Any woman would have fought as I did.”_

_“That is not true. I have met many women, though to be sure the acquaintance is short when you eat them. Perhaps I just never knew a woman long enough.”_

_“So it is true?! You eat the flesh of men? You are not a man Uther, but a monster!”_

_“Not a man no. A monster is a matter of opinion.”_

_“I should kill you.”_

_“Yes. You probably should, for if you don’t I will hunt you.”_

_“You threaten me when you are lame and I hold the knife? Nothing would stop me from killing you where you lay Uther Pendragon, or better yet, with you injured I will go to my betrothed, he will return with his men and he will be known as the man who slayed the demon king!”_

_“You hold a knife you will not use and I make a promise I will keep. Flee to your betrothed but by the time he returns for me my men will have gotten across the river and we will be long departed from here; but know this, Igraine, I will not stop until I have found you, I will stop at nothing to get to you.”_

_“Why! What will it matter once the marriage is made and my father and Gorlios allied?”_

_“It matters dear lady,” the demon wolf’s lips spread in a wicked grin full of teeth. “Because you are mine.”_

 

_*_*_

 

_Uther Alpha of Pendragon had warred with Gorlios for many years and still his enemy eluded him. The nobleman was a great warrior to be sure but he was still only a man, and no great tactician at that, and yet Gorlios and his army lived on. Even driven out of their keep the traveling tribe prospered and evaded Uther’s slaughter, rallying neighboring kings and princes to their cause and increasing the size of their army. And it was said by the people that it was the lady Igraine, who was clever and wise, who made it so. Lady Igraine, wife of Gorlios and beloved of her people, had gotten inside the blood of Uther of Pendragon, the clan Alpha having sworn that he would not cease his chase until Gorlios was crushed and Igraine was his._

_He was mad with his desire for her, telling even his most trusted advisors that he would have no one and nothing for eternity if he could have a single night with the lady Igraine, for whenever they crossed paths he felt within himself the certainty that she was meant for him as he was meant for her. Once, and then once more again, she had a chance to slay him and both times she did not raise her hand, for in her heart of hearts the lady knew him to be her match. At night when the moon was full sometimes she would hear the howling of wolves many miles away and she would think of the great white wolf with the golden eyes and wonder if there would ever be a full moon that didn’t pull her away from her husband and her people. Though he had offered to never harm another human again, would she but come to him, she could not trust his promises, nor could she bring herself to leave her young daughter._

_And so Uther raged and plotted until a plan came to him. He needed a wizard, and not just any enchanter, the one they called the Merlin. He knew however that the great wizard was not one to be found, though he was often known to appear in the middle of war wherever blood ran thickest. It was for this reason that Uther’s own father liked to call him The Great Buzzard, for the Merlin was known far and wide as a man-lover, his great powers wasted on a fascination with the cattle and every effort exhausted with sticking his nose where it didn’t belong and interfering with Clan affairs. He was a man who fed off the rise and fall of Clan Alpha’s and their armies like a carrion bird. If the Merlin could only be stirred to reveal himself when his precious humans were threatened, then the obvious way forward was to path the streets with them. Uther decided he would pile the bodies high as a tower and then the great wizard would come to him._

_And Ian did._

_“You are mad Pendragon. How many more must die for your lust?” The Merlin demanded that day and Uther crowed._

_“Just the house of Gorlios, who have taken what is mine. I shall have Igraine and I shall release the wolf in her. She is ours, wizard, that is certain. She was never meant to be cattle.”_

_“She is kindred yes. You can wake the wolf in her Uther, but must the whole world pay the price for your acquisition of one woman? Did it never occur to you to ask the lady for her favor before you soaked the land in the blood of the innocent? I have heard of less expensive courtships.”_

_“Cattle! Wizard, they were meat and nothing more.”_

_“It is a wonder your lady resists you.”_

_“I weary of words! Help me get Igraine, help me destroy Gorlios and the lady shall be mine. Do so and perhaps with her as my mate my hand will be gentled and the frightened deer you so love will be spared my teeth. Do not, and I shall not rest until there is not a one of them left from here to the sea!”_

_“Is this the order of the King? Shall there be no peace and shall we prey on people as if they were rabbits in a forest? Shall we blacken the land warring amongst ourselves for a throne built on the backs of our human cousins?”_

_“Spare me preacher, for if you truly fight for unity on behalf of men, then what better way than to unite the Pendragon with the house of Mac Murchadha? They say you are a great seer, well than I beseech you to see! See into the heart of me and know me to be true. There shall be peace by this union, I swear it.”_

_And the Merlin looked to the strands of time, the weaving of the fabric of all life that was, is, and is to come, and in its patterns he saw a great throne, a king to sit upon it and a glimmering age that would be remembered in the hearts of all living creatures. Though Uther did not know it he did indeed speak true._

_The hope of a dark world lay in the hands of a babe unborn, a boy the world would know as Arthur._

-*-*-

Tina glanced down at her phone as it buzzed on the passenger seat the name BURT glowing bright and ominous on the screen. He’d been calling at least once a day for the past week, always asking if she’d heard anything from Kurt and every time Tina saw a missed call guilt ate at her. Kurt’s father was pretty worried about him, and he had a right to be. Tina was frightened for him too. With a killer vampire on the lose Columbus had become a different city. People were afraid to venture out on their own, to talk to strangers, to look anyone in the eye for fear of being glamourd. There were police patrols everywhere and there had been an influx of wolf sightings as the lycan community took to the streets, literally attempting to sniff out the danger to them all. People weren’t happy about that either, used to the idea of lycans blending in and not drawing attention to the fact that they were different. This guy Gregson at her work had spotted a wolf in the alley outside his window over the weekend and had a theory that the lycan’s and the _blood suckers_ were in on it together.

“I mean all these animals running around, supposedly looking for the guy, and people are still dying. How do we know they aren’t the ones doing it in the first place?” 

It was a question that even Michael’s coven was asking. Yeah the killer was draining all the victims of their blood vampire style but he was also eating parts of them and no vampire alive could do that without becoming violently ill. So why do it and how was it exactly that this _vampire_ kept eluding capture if all of the lycan guard was really looking for him? It had not escaped Tina’s notice that all of the victims had been found in places she knew, places that when lined up pointed to Kurt. She didn’t know what was going on, who was stalking people in places associated with her best friend, but she knew that Mike and the others in the coven were suspicious that this was all just a cover up. She’d overheard Mike and his father talking about bad blood and how conversion didn’t always take right, how some people became diseased in the mind and were better put down. They thought that Kurt was rabid and that Blaine was covering for him, letting vampires take the fall for his mate.

“He needs to be stopped if this is the case. We will see for ourselves during the conclave, and if Blaine is not prepared to hold his oath, we shall do his duty for him.”

Tina didn’t know what that meant, but she knew it wasn’t good. They thought Kurt was killing these people and really that was only the excuse they needed to justify hurting him, so many of the coven had been out for his blood ever since he’d nearly killed Brittany. That was who she was going to see. She and Mike had only visited her a couple of times, because while she healed the wizard seeing to her insisted she couldn’t be moved and that meant staying with Santana Lopez, a she-wolf who made no secret of her hate for vampires and didn’t particularly care to let parades of them into her home. Tina was hoping that the fact that she wasn’t actually vampire would sway the woman into letting her in to talk to Brittany.

“What do you want Bella Swan?” Santana drawled when Tina was standing on the front step of the small house she shared with her aging grandmother. Tina began to fear maybe Santana wasn’t going to trust her more just because Mike wasn’t here.

“I came to check up on Brittany. Is she up to visitors today?” She asked undauntedly, glancing down at her hip as her cellphone vibrated in her pocket with an incoming text.

“No she’s not. Not after your little pal Hummel chewed her up like she was his favorite rubber duck, or did you forget?” Tina winced at the other woman’s harsh reminder that Mike and the others had _reason_ to believe that Kurt might be rabid.

“He didn’t mean to,” Tina jumped to his defense for what felt like the hundredth time that week. “Kurt’s seriously one of the gentlest guys, he—”

“Save it Tweeny, I don’t really trust the judgment of a girl whose idea of foreplay is getting her soul sucked out through her neck. At least I try not to. But I’ll be sure to tell Britt her leech buddy’s favorite blood bank stopped by.” Santana made to shut the door in her face but Tina couldn’t let it go that easily. She wedged herself in the doorframe and only cowered slightly when an angry snarl ripped out of Santana’s throat and the woman snapped her lengthening teeth at her. “You’ve got three seconds to get your bite pocked neck out of my doorway Bella, before I rip it out.”

“Wait please! Santana I just need to talk to her. She’s the only one who knows what happened that night and I’ve got to know—”

“Here’s what happened!” Tina stumbled back as Santana whipped the door back open and got in her face to growl. “Anderson’s _harmless_ little lady gay saw his best gal pal snuggling up with a blood sucking bastard. Do you have any idea what the monster you’re so in love with is a part of? What they do to people like you? That bastard tortured her and then he couldn’t just let her die and let it be over, he made her what he is! He made her one of them and they actually think she’s _broken_ because she refuses to be scum like them.

“That’s the kind of guy your Michael Cullen is, Tina Cohen-Swan, and your friend Kurt has ten times the brain you do, even if he is a violent psychopath, because he didn’t want his best friend shacking up with a blood sucking fiend! And guess what, Doll Face, Brittany paid the price! _That’s_ what happened so you can get your clichéd pathetic thrall ass off my property or I swear I’m—”

“Santana?” a childlike voice interrupted the woman’s tirade and Santana immediately faltered.

“Britt, you’re not supposed to be out of bed,” Santana said to the blond woman who had appeared behind her, though she didn’t step back or turn around to face her.

“I heard yelling. I thought you and your abuela must be fighting again.” Catching sight of Tina the sad pout on Brittany’s face dissipated and like the sun coming out she smiled as she caught sight of Tina and clapped her hands gleefully. “Tina! You came back. Is Mike here?”

Tina just barely managed not to stare overly long at the scars ringing Brittany’s throat, marking where teeth had gripped her windpipe, mustering up a smile for the blond vampiress.

“No he’s not. I actually came because I wanted to talk to you. But Santana wouldn’t let me in.” Tina shot a glare at the Latina woman and Santana just looked bored. Brittany nodded sagely and to Tina’s utter shock rested her chin on the lycan woman’s shoulder as she said on a sigh, “Santana doesn’t like you because you’re in love with Mike, and Mike’s part of Sire’s coven and Santana thinks all vampires are crazy. Not okay crazy like I am, but scary crazy like Sire was.” To Tina’s amazement the lycan woman didn’t snarl or snap at having a vampire woman behave so familiarly with her. If anything it could even have been called gentle when she shrugged the woman’s head off her shoulder and stepped back into the house, a tired frown on her face.

“You’re not crazy, Britt,” Tina heard her murmur and then she looked at Tina and snapped, “Since it looks like you’re coming in, just keep this little inquisition short. She’s still healing. No thanks to your friend Hummel.” She left them both standing in the doorway without another word, disappearing down the hall with her heels clicking on the hardwood floor.

“She’s a peach,” Tina grumbled at her departing back and Brittany hummed like she was seriously considering the prospect.

“No, Santana’s a lime.”

Tina hadn’t spent much time with Mike’s coven sister but she knew better than to remark on a comment like that and was quiet as she followed Brittany into the house to sit in the front room. The house clearly belonged to Santana’s abuela, the décor traditional but with the kind of warmth and hominess that had seen several generations pass through it. Tina sank into a comfortable armchair and Brittany carefully lowered her body into a chair opposite, her body still showing signs of stiffness despite her overall look of good health.

“How are you doing?” She asked with a sympathetic wince at Brittany’s obvious discomfort.

“Alright, Sue fixed me up really well except my bones still hurt. She gave me a potion for the pain that Santana keeps giving me but I spit it out when she’s not looking because it tastes like horse.”

Tina had encountered the witch that Santana had gotten to help save Brittany’s life after her attack, a woman by the name of Sue Sylvester, only once before and if Tina had to point to any of her acquaintances and name the crazy one it would be her.

“Maybe it has something in it? I don’t know like sweat of horse or something.” Tina offered up in reply. “Isn’t that what wizards cook up? Along with eye of newt.”

“Sue says newt is for amateurs, that you know a true potions master by how difficult to get their ingredients are. You don’t happen to have a cat with only one litter do you? She needs bones and I told her I’d keep an eye out. My cat would donate but he’s a boy.”

Well that was scary. Tina made a note to herself to keep her interactions with wizards to a minimum and cleared her throat.

“Britt I wanted to ask you. You remember my friend Kurt?” She felt like a moron asking, because of course Brittany remembered, but she didn’t know how else to start the conversation she needed to have so she just let it sit there and waited. Brittany nodded, a guarded look entering her eyes as she played with the cover on her armchair.

“Your puppy friend? Yes. I’d never really talked to one of them before. He didn’t like me very much and I didn’t like him much either, but Santana’s really nice so I think it’s just Kurt I don’t like.”

“He was confused Brittany,” Tina leaned forward in her eagerness to get at least one person to understand that Kurt wasn’t a violent maniac. “Vampires and Werewolves are like mortal enemies from what I hear and Kurt didn’t even _know_ he was a werewolf! He was only trying to protect me. He’s not a killer.”

“What makes you think that?” Brittany asked quizzically, tilting her head to one side as she waited for Tina’s explanation. Tina sputtered for a moment, knocked a bit off her stride.

“Because I know him?”

“Really? How come you didn’t tell him he was lycan?”

“Because I didn’t know!”

“Oh.” Brittany mused. “So you don’t know him? At least you don’t know him now.”

“I…” Tina fell short, unsure what to say to that. Reading her confusion the blond vampire nodded with a sad little sigh, looking to the ceiling as if the pieces of the story she needed would fall from there and arrange themselves in order.

“My parents knew me too… I think. It’s hard to remember them sometimes, but I hope they did. They knew me and they didn’t care that a bad man had taken me or that I was broken; they loved me too much to throw me away.”

“What happened to them?” Tina asked quietly. She had always wondered. The coven did not speak openly about the details surrounding Brittany’s conversion, but Tina knew the others caller her ‘aberration’ and that she owed her life and her presence in the coven to Mike and his family. Tina remembered so little of her time in thrall on the full moon but she did remember Brittany’s voice, she did remember what the woman had told her about Mike saving her life. She’d asked since then and Mike would only tell her that the coven had a responsibility to put down aberrations and that he had convinced his father to spare Brittany when they’d found her in a mental institution.

“I got really sick. I couldn’t eat food anymore and the doctors said I was dying. They tried to get me to eat but it kept making me sick. I didn’t like anybody after that. They were all hurting me and everything was still so scary. I kept hearing Sire’s voice in my head, telling me he’d come back, telling me I’d learn to like the blood. I couldn’t get out of bed because I was too sick and mommy cried all the time. I remember that, definitely. You don’t forget it when your mommy cries over you. I kept getting sicker and hungrier and I kept thinking about the blood.”

Tina didn’t want to hear any more but she was caught in Brittany’s gaze like a fly barely able to breath, forced to take in terrible word after terrible word.

“I drank mommy because she was begging me to eat. I only wanted to make her happy, but nothing was happy after that. I ran and hid when she stopped moving because she was dead and I hadn’t meant to kill her at all. I wanted her to move again but I knew she wouldn’t and then daddy was home and he was screaming. He was calling my name like he needed me, like all he wanted was to love me and keep me safe, but when he saw me… He tried to hurt me. He tried to kill me I think but then Sire was there and he showed me that daddy had blood that we could drink too. He’d promised he’d find me so I wasn’t surprised to see him I don’t think. The policemen showed up and started shooting and Sire got hurt. I thought he died because he never found me again but maybe not. The policemen, they thought he did it because they thought they knew me too. They were sad because I had to watch a monster kill my parents.”

Brittany had gone so still, leaning her head back to look at the ceiling, as she recounted the memory that it startled a yelp out of Tina when the blond vampire swung her head up to stare directly at her.

“So you see they didn’t know me very well at all,” She finished with a shrug. “My parents must have known a different Brittany because they didn’t think I was a monster. I guess I knew her too because I didn’t expect to be a monster either. But I was. Mommy and daddy were gone, Sire was gone, and then all my doctors were gone too because I couldn’t stop being thirsty. That’s why Mike and the coven came to put me to sleep, only I didn’t want to go yet. I know I’m not right anymore, I know the conversion messed up my head, but that doesn’t mean I want to sleep forever. I was sorry about my parents, about my doctors, the kind of sorry you feel when you figure out that magic isn’t pretty like in storybooks. It’s a sorry you have to keep with you forever because it’s not just a sorry, it’s a hole in your heart. I promised I’d never kill anything again and Mike believed me. I haven’t since then, but the coven still thinks I’m broken.”

Tina knew she should feel horrible for the surge of elation she felt at Brittany’s confessions but she couldn’t help it, not when Brittany had just provided her with the ammunition she needed to take the wind out of the coven’s sails and stop the imminent war brewing between them and the lycan pack.

“Brittany that’s perfect!” She crowed, hastening to explain when Brittany got a hurt expression. “Not that the coven is mean to you. They shouldn’t do that. I mean it’s perfect because they think _Kurt_ is rabid, like you were when you first turned.”

“But that’s silly, Kurt hasn’t killed anybody.” Brittany said it so confidently Tina could have kissed her. “Sire’s the one who killed—”

“Right, but Britt right _now_ there is a vampire loose in the city killing people and your coven thinks Kurt is the one doing it!” Tina interrupted, because she had to drag Brittany out of the past and get her to see the importance of what was happening around them all right now. “They think Blaine’s covering it up, or whatever, because he’s in love with him. Don’t you see? You have to come to the conclave. Balaur isn’t going to have any room to talk with you there. You’re proof that just because it was difficult for him to adjust after conversion and he got a bit carried away, doesn’t mean Kurt’s some sort of killing machine. Honestly, Balaur doesn’t have room to talk with you living right under his roof.”

“Which is exactly why she won’t be allowed to attend,” Santana barged into the conversation from the doorway where she leaned, arms crossed and hip cocked. “Do you have any idea what this conclave means? God you’re so in over your head Bella it’s pissing me off.”

“Santana, be nice.” Brittany pleaded and Santana scowled at her.

“And why should I do that? You think Tina the Vampire Layer is here to be nice? Britt she doesn’t give a shit about you. All she cares about is saving Hummel’s sorry ass. You may be too innocent to see that it’s at your expense but I‘m not.” Here she turned back to Tina with something wild and hungry behind her eyes and Tina gulped, feeling for the first time like prey, trapped and alone. “Don’t you know that sorry coven is all the family she has? You want her to stick her neck out for you and Hummel and you don’t even know the stakes!”

“Look I know Balaur would be pissed but Kurt could take the fall for this!” Tina answered her shout for shout, desperate now because somehow _Santana_ who should want Brittany out of her hair as soon as possible was getting in her way, guarding her like a mother lion—or wolf, come to think of it. She didn’t know why the lycan woman had decided she didn’t hate this particular vampire but she wasn’t hearing her. Kurt could be killed! “I think I understand the stakes a whole lot better than you do!”

“Oh _puh-lease_. You still think this is about the killings. You think Balaur, leader of the biggest vampire coven between here and Cincinnati, gives a shit about a couple humans turning up dead? News flash Neck Buffet, vampires have been killing people for years and getting away with it because they actually do not give a rats ass about the damn treaty! They’ve been chomping at the bit for decades to break free of it and go back to the days when it was all you can eat. The only thing keeping them in line is fear of the Merlin and his guard dog Anderson.”

“You mean Blaine?” Tina asked in confusion, she didn’t know much about him, had never even met him outside of being a dog but she didn’t know what Santana thought one man could do to keep an entire coven of vampires from anarchy if that was truly their aim.

“I mean _all_ the Andersons. Everyone knows the Merlin raised them up special to bite the ass of anyone attempting to mess with master’s house. They’ve got something magic, something only they can use, that has every vampire master the world over towing a line they don’t want to tow. You know what that means? It means it’s Balaur’s wet dream to see them all fall down a dark hole! It means vampires have been trying to take them out for years and it wasn’t any damn accident when a _rogue_ vampire took out Blaine’s mother, or his brothers, and it’s no damn coincidence now that people are dropping like flies or that they’re blaming a wet behind the ears convert everyone knows didn’t do jack who just happens to be his mate.” At her thick swallow Santana grinned cruelly at Tina, lowering her voice with a menacing growl. “Are you getting the picture now? Blaine has no choice but to initiate this little conclave, and he’s the last of them Tina. The very last Anderson is a young hot head who has gone flip over a dewy eyed gay boy who wouldn’t know the first thing about warding off a vampire attack, and _when_ he dies you can say bye bye Anderson. He’ll combust and if he doesn’t get himself killed the Merlin is going to have to put him down like the rabid dog he’ll be. You can be sure Balaur knows that.”

Tina would have sat down if she wasn’t already sitting. This was not good. None of this was good and Kurt was caught up in the middle of it. No sooner did the thought go franticly through her mind then did her phone alert her to another call, jarring her out of her thoughts with insistent vibration against her thigh.

*-*-*-*

Burt sighed, shutting his phone closed without leaving another voicemail. Tina wasn’t answering and while he would have liked to believe it was only because it was just past three in the afternoon and she was probably busy at work, he suspected more likely that she was simply avoiding him. He’d talked to her a few times at the beginning of the week, each time she’d insisted she knew nothing and had heard nothing from Kurt, but Burt had known her since she and Kurt were kids and she must know _something_ if she was avoiding him.

Well, she wasn’t going to be able to evade him for long. He’d made the drive to Columbus to get answers and he wasn’t leaving until he was a hundred percent certain that at the very least Kurt was someplace safe if not in any trouble. He glanced up at Kurt’s little house, the leftover of so many dreams and plans that had gone awry, and sighed. He knew where Kurt kept the spare key, naturally, and normally he wouldn’t go snooping around his kid’s house when he was away but nothing about this situation was normal.

He retrieved the key quickly; glancing around just to make sure no one was paying too much attention and entered, pausing only a moment at the door to shrug off the feeling of eyes on his back. Probably a neighbor wondering who the heck was breaking into Kurt’s house.

The thing that struck him first was how unplanned everything looked, as if Kurt had set out one morning with the intent to return to that book on the couch, to wash those few dishes in the sink, and to put away those rejected outfits laid out on the bed. Kurt’s home looked as if he’d not planned to leave it and when Burt’s poking around revealed that Kurt’s suitcases were still in the closet and it didn’t look as if any of his clothing was actually missing (not that he was the best judge of that) apprehension prickled the back of his neck. Why would Kurt leave and not take anything with him?

What had happened? He wondered. Where was his kid?

He didn’t find anything that gave him any clues but he did find something that sent a bolt of fear right down to his gut. Burt had moved over to Kurt’s vanity, smiling faintly at the photos displayed there. There were happy moments with Kurt and his friends, his family, and a few of him and his ‘babies’ (that damned dog and noisy bird). He’d glanced over to the stand where Kurt always hung his bird’s cage during the evening and noticed for the first time that the cage was there. That could mean Kurt had either failed to move it downstairs for the day or that he’d left sometime in the evening without any of his possessions, despite having called Burt in early afternoon.

More disturbingly, the bird was still inside the cage and it was very dead. It would have been troubling enough had Burt discovered the thing to have been left to die without proper feeding (because that was one of Kurt’s babies, he loved that mangy bird like he’d given birth to it) but Burt could see that someone (probably Tina) had been by to fill its water and lay more seed. It looked like an animal had gotten to it; the thing was nothing more than a mangled ball of feathers and blood at the bottom of its cage.

What sort of animal could reach a hanging cage, open its door, take a few bites, and then take its leave remembering to shut the door behind it? Burt didn’t know. He did know there was a killer on the loose and that _someone_ had been here. He recalled again the feeling of being watched from earlier and shivered.

Something was going on here, something really bad, and somehow Kurt was caught up in it. He had to find his son. There was just nothing else to it.

-*-*-

Kurt woke that afternoon with a lingering headache, but otherwise he felt considerably better than he had that morning. He didn’t need the quick glance to Blaine’s side of the bed to know that Blaine had been out and about for a while, his duties as Alpha not pausing just because Kurt had knocked himself nearly senseless with power he had no business trying to handle. He flushed, remembering how he’d thrown himself on Blaine afterward. The fact that his concussion was mostly to blame didn’t do anything to ease his embarrassment. It wasn’t exactly doing much for his case for independence that every time he lost a bit of control he was _actually_ begging Blaine to claim him; and Blaine had, again, looked out for Kurt when Kurt wasn’t able to do it for himself, at his own expense and all of it in the vain hope that Kurt would come to him in his own time.

Blaine had started to tell him a history, his family history, and somewhere back there in ages past was an Alpha named Uther, who had loved a human woman named Igraine. Blaine, like Arthur, was everything Uther was not. Kurt was entrusting so much more than his body with Blaine, sharing a bed with him on the full moon, and the thing was he did trust that Blaine would keep him safe no matter what. That’s why he’d asked. Lina had charged him to find someone he could relax with and enjoy one of the kinder sides to his new life, and Blaine was the one. He never could have put so much of himself in a stranger’s hands.

Kurt sighed, rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling as he thought. Blaine had said it before but he’d always discounted it out of resentment and, yes, fear. He’d told Kurt that his own feelings were part of the force drawing them together and making the bond so strong between them. It wasn’t magic that made him feel the way he felt about Blaine. The way he felt about Blaine was creating magic. Almost without his permission his lips quirked into a smile at that thought. Blaine was smart, fun, adorable, frustrating, perfectly flawed and somehow still horribly perfect despite it all that Kurt couldn’t pretend that in any other circumstances he’d have just come out and said it. He was falling in love with him, probably had been since The Tail & Paw, each new layer he discovered only adding to the depth.

That didn’t mean they would work, that didn’t mean Kurt was ready to give up his life, it just meant he had that much more to lose.

When had the thought of losing Blaine had the power to make his mouth taste so much like ash? He realized that he’d started gripping the sheets, his nails unconsciously thickening into claws. The thought of a life without Blaine (without his smile, and his kind eyes, without his gentle presence in the back of Kurt’s mind, without the delightful waves of his emotion washing between them like ocean tide) was inconceivable. And yet it might come down to that. Blaine was putting so much of himself on the line, trusting Kurt with so much of himself, that Kurt was honestly floored by it. He knew now why Blaine could never leave here and make a new life with him, just as he knew how quickly Blaine would if it were an option. He let himself have a moment to ache over what might have been, if Blaine was someone like Adam who could choose to pick up and start a new life elsewhere… someone like Kurt. And there, he was back where he’d started. Fair or not the choice was his. He was the one who could choose to stay or go and Blaine was letting him even if it was crazy, even if it put so much more than just Blaine and his heart at risk.

No wonder Flint and the others hated him. _He_ hated the idea of Blaine putting everything out there and waiting to get hit. It was so stupid of him, and brave and loving and… Kurt rolled over trying to drown out the sound of his own heart thudding loudly in his ears.

What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t leave and he couldn’t stay. He wanted his own family and the life he was familiar with, but he also wanted Blaine and the friends he was making. He didn’t want to give up on his own dreams but he didn’t want to leave Blaine alone with a crown that weighed to heavy and a broken heart. He didn’t want to break his own heart either. What he wanted was… was…

He didn’t know what he wanted. Kurt buried his head in his hands and groaned.

But, then he remembered something else Blaine had said. He’d said that it was okay to want two different things. He’d said that while a choice had to be made, the only way to know what he wanted more was to allow himself the right to figure it out. He hadn’t been doing that at all really, he realized as he blinked the frustrated tears from his eyes. Blaine might think he’d been the one holding back but maybe so had Kurt. He’d been trying so hard to hold onto what he felt right wanting, what he felt he _should_ choose, what was safe and familiar if not fulfilling, that he hadn’t let himself so much as consider the alternative. One of the first things he’d told himself to do when he’d decided to stay was _not_ to fall in love with Blaine.

Just listen to that! He’d already made the choice hadn’t he? So what was he going on about needing time to decide. No, it was time to be honest with himself. If he was going to decide whether or not this was a life he could live he had to give himself permission be a part of it, starting with Flint and the challenge.

Kurt slowly sat up, wiping sleep from his eyes as he went over his memories of that morning. He and Blaine had shared something only Blaine and his mate where supposed to share, and it had happened because they were causing friction in the pack. His presence and the way they were carrying out their courtship was unorthodox in the extreme and knowing what he now knew of Blaine’s role in the subhuman community he had to admit it was dangerous. He wasn’t going to change anything, couldn’t commit until he was sure, but he could do something to help ease the others fears and gain some of their trust.

If Kurt had learned anything from his lessons and his readings it was that the only way for one lycan to win the respect of another was through combat. They fought with each other for rank. Pack order provided the community with order and gave each individual assurance in their leader’s capability to protect and provide. Kurt had his thoughts on how primitive it all was, but this was who they were. He could show respect for that, he could show respect for _them_ by not allowing Blaine to fight a battle that was his. He was the one who needed to earn their trust. Maybe it was time to stop whining like the little boy they assumed he was and show them in their own language that he was capable. It was nothing they all hadn’t had to do at some point or another, nothing Blaine hadn’t had to do a hundred times over.

Yes. Okay that would be his first step. He was here and he wanted to stay for the time being. He wanted a relationship with their Alpha, even if it was doomed never to end in a bond, and while they could grumble about that if they liked he was still going to do this his way. But if that was the way he wanted it to be, if he wanted to hold even a temporary place here, he was going to have to earn it _their_ way. Kurt got out of the bed and walked over to the mirror across the room, staring at the tall man who stared back at him. He didn’t look obviously different on the outside. There was more tone to his arms and legs, more firmness to his chest, but nothing that couldn’t have been added with a couple of days out of his week dedicated to the gym; or you know a couple of weeks of running around the forest.

His eyes maybe, they were on the bluer side of blue-grey-green these days. Maybe his canines were pointier than they had been? Maybe there was straightness to his back, a light behind his eyes that seemed to have a life of its own. There wasn’t much noticeably different at first glance and yet all of it put together the man in the mirror looked wild in a way that Kurt Hummel as he had known himself before had never been. Why hadn’t he noticed that before now? Why was it only hitting him now like a ton of bricks that while he’d been trying so hard to hang onto who he was he’d already changed and was only changing more still?

Suddenly that man in the mirror looked so much a stranger that Kurt couldn’t fathom how he had ever thought he was the same at all. He reached out and let his fingers meet his reflection thinking to himself that if he had changed, maybe it was time to get to know himself again.

Maybe the first step to deciding if he wanted this life was to live it, just a little.

Decision made Kurt went to look for Blaine.

-*-*-

_Arthur Mac Murchadha had never met his father or his mother, for they had died before his legs were strong enough to walk. His father had been slain by King Uther and his mother taken captive. His grandfather had declared war to get her back and the mad king had eventually been slain but his mother, the Lady Igraine, had also met her death, pushed from a tower. The old woman who took care of him now was no relation to him at all but he called her Grandmother just the same. Grandmother told him stories of his mother whom Grandmother herself had cared for when she had been a babe. She told him stories of her cleverness and her beauty, of her bravery and her feats against the mad king Uther, but always she reminded him of her goodness. His mother had been so good that when he had been born, even whilst she was in captivity, she had given him to an old wizard who had taken him from the castle in secret and given him to Grandmother so that he might grow up free and good. Arthur would sometimes sit for hours and dream of her, writing into the dirt the ideals she had so believed in: honor, nobility, and chivalry._

_Old man Ian visited him often and added to these stories. Arthur looked forward to his visits not only because he was lonely with just Grandmother, but because Ian spoke to him of mysteries and often took Arthur on his own adventures. Arthur wasn’t the only orphan to be sure in the village, nor the only boy other men called a bastard, but he was the only boy he knew with a secret. Then again that was the point of secrets. If they were being kept right you were supposed to believe you were the only one with one._

_Arthur’s secret was that sometimes he wasn’t a man at all. There was a wolf inside of him and if he wasn’t careful it overtook his body and he became wild as the forest. He knew of course that it was said that the king had also been able to become a wolf, that he had sold his soul to a demon for the unnatural power, and Arthur feared that his wolf spirit meant that he too was damned._

_“Grandmother says I must never tell anyone I am wolf inside. She says It is a curse, that if I let the wolf out I shall be as mad as King Uther.”_

_“All men can choose their paths Arthur, but you are right. Those of the wolf spirit have a knack for choosing brutality over chivalry. Perhaps the wolf is a curse; perhaps it means you will be little more than a beast like those before you.”_

_“No! I’m not a beast. I’m a boy!”_

_“And are you a good boy Arthur? Shall you grow to be a good man?”_

_“I-I don’t know?”_

_“Then you are no worse than Grandmother or I. No man can know. He can only choose.”_

_So Arthur chose. He swore as a boy that he would always choose good, that he would be as brave and noble as his lady mother and commit himself to the protection of the weak. Ian promised him that one day he would swear it again, only this time the oath would be binding._


	16. Practice Makes Perfect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt starts getting his feet wet being Blaine's...something, Blaine starts contemplating having to use that thing everyone is so afraid of, Lina has a bad day at work, Chandler contemplates murder, and Sam might actually _get_ murdered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a portion of this chapter that I feel can only FULLY be appreciated in its sheer absurdity by going immediately after you finish it to Kaci Battaglia's Crazy Possessive. A link has been provided so that you can do that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js7x8W6YvM8

_Long before the birth of Arthur it was believed that magic was the work of pagan gods and devilish sprites, and that only men who were no longer pure in the eyes of the Lord could perform it. There were enchanters who could perform small feats of magic for the man who paid them the right price, but true magic hailed from a land called Avalon, a land behind the mist, cloaked from the eyes of ordinary men._

_There was once a queen of Avalon they called the medb of dreams, who the histories of men know only as Maeb. It was Queen Maeb who foresaw the destruction of the world beyond the veil, if men should be left to their own devices, and it was her heart who broke for the plight of mortals. She went to her sisters with her visions, but it was not the way of the queens to interfere in the world beyond the veil, at least not more than they needed to for the begetting of babes._

_“The magic beyond the veil is dark and tainted and men have become wicked and violent. What be it to us if their world crumbles? Let it be dust,” her sisters decreed, and Maeb replied, “But is there not still much good in them? Do we not harvest the best of their crop at Beltane for the fostering of more sisters? What will become of us when there are no more of them? What will become of this world we nurture when the hands that till its earth and the minds that dream beneath its stars are no more?”_

_And so it was decided that there must be a child of Avalon sent to intercede in the affairs of men and it was set to Queen Maeb to see that it was done. She journeyed beyond the veil to inspire in the hearts of men dreams of peace and ambitions of greatness. Though it was said that she planted the seeds of many great men to come, it seemed that all around her the world remained dark and shrouded in despair. Maeb began to wither like a bloom without water, her mind slowly becoming befuddled and lost, and her soul eager to depart this world. She journeyed back to the veil between this land and Avalon, but the gate was barred to her. Her sisters mourned her loss as she stepped within the waters of the lake and felt only the touch of earth beneath her feet, for she had grown too much a part of this world and could no longer step into that one. Resigned to never seeing her home again, Maeb asked her sisters to sing her to sleep and laid her head to rest on the lake shore to welcome her final dream._

_She dreamed of a young woman. In her eyes was the moss of the earth and all that grows. Her hair was dark as birch and soft to hold in hand like earth falling through fingers. Though she was as lovely as anything can be lovely, the woman’s heart was heavy with despair, for her heart had given birth to many dreams and all but one of them had been crushed by the hand of her kin. Only the desire for death remained, so Maeb met her in the in-between and spoke to her._

_“Why does a living flame aspire only to death?”_

_And in that place between life and death, the place where dreams first know life, the woman turned to Queen Maeb and said, “In death there will be freedom. I will be free or nothing at all.”_

_And Maeb loved her as she had never loved another, gathering her to her breast and whispering to her the truths she knew. “In death there is nothing at all. It is a thread that twines along the thread of our lives, but it is only in life that a soul can truly be free.”_

_In her arms Maeb knew she held the gem of this world, the soil that must be planted in to bear the one who would save them, for it was evident by her own failure that not just any child of Avalon could perform the task. The interceder must be able to live in the world as people do and bleed as they bleed and sweat as they sweat and dream as they dream. And so Queen Maeb told her love that if she wished, Maeb would pluck her from heartache and the strife of her life. They would have but a brief time together but it would be treasure to them both, and from that time a child would be born, a child of magic who was also a child of the earth. Her love agreed, and so it was that when Maeb woke the young woman was still in her arms, though she had no memory of anything that had come before._

_Maeb called her Aden._

_Long after Maeb’s passing from the world Aden would draw peculiar looks from men and women she encountered, for in the tongues of Aden’s people, who worshiped the One God, her name was Adam, which meant red and earthy. She knew that in the tongue of Maeb’s people it meant earth and fire, and that Aden was a name that spoke to creation, which was all that Maeb loved. So Aden bore the name with pride even though its peculiarity set her apart from others and in many minds branded her a witch. And that was how the mother of all Witches was born, for she and Maeb bore a babe just as she had predicted. His name was Ian, and Aden named him so because Ian simply meant that God was gracious._

_*_*_

Burt headed to Kurt’s work with urgency, his fingers drumming impatiently on the steering wheel at every stop sign and red light. Though Kurt had worked with the company for several years Burt didn’t expect Stephen or any of the other Company members to know something he or Tina might not, but then again Kurt may have felt the need to disclose more to his boss in the hopes of keeping his job, than he might have wanted to otherwise. It certainly seemed that way judging by the messages he’d found when he’d gone through Kurt’s voicemail.

_”Kurt, this is Stephen. I know you’re still away, but listen. We’ve got to replace you and I’ve got to be honest with you, everyone’s pretty freaked out by this vampire thing. Some people are starting to think it might be werewolves you know? Which yeah maybe, whatever, it’s crazy…but I just think maybe for now it’s better if we wait for things to calm down? I haven’t told anyone but if they found out it could be trouble and we just don’t need that right now. Right? This show has seen enough trouble. Anyway… take care. I hope you get this whole thing figured out.”_

Burt was no stranger to the Palace Theater, what with his son so often working there, but seemingly overnight Columbus had become a different city than the one he remembered from his last visit. The security guard just inside the door stopped him before he could go more than a foot and informed him that visitors were no longer allowed to bring outside liquids or anything metal into the building. He was then checked for weapons, and then a light was shown into his eyes and into his mouth in what he was assured was a routine check. “We’re being required to cross examine every subhuman who enters. You’re clear to go Mr. Hummel.”

He didn’t walk to Stephen’s office so much as march. A heavy weight had settled in Burt’s gut after he’d heard Stephen’s message, the pieces of the story slowly but insistently falling into place. A dangerous subhuman was stalking the city. Kurt had fled his home in a hurry, not taking a single thing with him. A couple of the bodies had been found in places Burt was sure he’d been with Kurt. Someone had broken into Kurt’s apartment and made a point to kill his bird. Stephen knew something about Kurt he thought the other company members would be upset to learn.

Kurt was in trouble, and Burt was done messing around. Someone was going to give him answers today if he had to start cracking heads together. Stephen’s door was closed when he got there but he could hear movement and inside so he knocked insistently on the door and waited. A muffled voice called for him to hold a second and he waited impatiently, thrusting his hands in his pockets. After a moment the door cracked open and Stephen peered out it, giving himself just enough time to recognize the man on the other side of it before he swung it all the way open and greeted Burt with a tight smile.

“Burt! It’s good to see you again.” Stephen beckoned him inside with a wave and it took Burt a moment to get his bearings because all six feet of Stephen was currently crammed in a tight red dress. Kurt’s boss was also trying to remove a pair of giant gold hoop earrings that had gotten caught in the curly blonde wig he was sporting. When Burt was inside and the door safely closed behind him, Stephen walked over to sit at his desk under the window and gestured for Burt to sit across from him as he said, “Excuse the get-up, one of our actresses quit. They’re dropping like flies; everyone’s scared out of their minds to leave the house. This is turning out to be the most traditional take on a modern take of Shakespeare we’ve ever put on.” When Burt only grunted in response Stephen glanced at him and nodded, as if deciding something, and waved his own words away. “But I suppose you’re here about Kurt?”

“Yeah I got your message.” Burt led in, playing it cool. He’d let Stephen assume whatever he wanted about that. It was the right move to make because Stephen seemed eager to spill his guts. His guilt was written all over his face as he said, “Yeah, Burt, I’m sorry about that but you get it right? I mean I know Kurt wouldn’t hurt anybody, but with this killer and everybody talking about how it could be a werewolf, nobody feels safe around those freaks right now.” Stephen’s eyes went wide as he seemed to catch himself and hastened to back track. “Not that Kurt’s a freak. I mean I don’t blame him, it sucks that he got bit by one of those animals. I know he didn’t ask for it…” Burt knew in the back of his mind that Stephen was still talking but all he heard was the words _got bit_ repeating over and over in his head.

He was reminded of a hundred and one Human Conservation classes he’d taken as a kid, each of them detailing ways to avoid becoming a victim of a dangerous subhuman. Everyone knew that if a werewolf bit you and didn’t kill you there was a high chance that you yourself would turn into one. No one had ever heard of or met anyone who had an honest to god werewolf bite but it couldn’t be counted as myth either because the HCP kept teaching about it as fact. Apparently there were documented cases of humans becoming infected with whatever it was that made werewolves werewolves, and if Stephen was telling the truth his son had just joined their ranks.

“There you are just living your life, minding your own business and WHAM one of them can just come up and bite you and it’s all over. It’s just—”

“Stephen!” Stephen cut off with a yelp when Burt shouted his name.

“Are you trying to tell me one of those things hurt my kid and nobody thought to notify his family?” Not caring to wait for an answer he leaned over Stephen’s desk, demanding furiously to know where Kurt was. “Did someone take him? Is he still alright? God damn it Stephen where is my kid?!” Burt felt like losing his mind. He had no idea what the protocol was on humans who got _infected_. Maybe Kurt had disappeared into a medical facility. Wasn’t that what the government did with people who contracted diseases they didn’t understand? It was in movies. But if that was the case why hadn’t he been notified? Why wouldn’t Stephen or Tina, for god’s sake, call him!

“Jesus, Burt, take it easy alright.” The man was taller but Burt was definitely broader, and on top of that he was desperate so Stephen was wise to flinch back and throw his hands up in the universal symbol of ‘I am small and not a threat’, but Burt was far from placated.

“Take it easy! My kid got bit by a werewolf and he’s out there on his own. How long have you known about this?!”

“Since he called me last month! I thought he’d have told you—”

“Well he didn’t! What did he tell you?”

“But… that doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t he—”

“What did he tell you Stephen?!” Burt thundered, advancing around the desk and Stephen flinched and, walking backwards, did his best to keep the desk between them.

“Nothing! Burt I swear he just called and said he wanted to take a leave from work and when I asked him for a reason he told me he got bit; but that’s it. I don’t know where he is. I thought he’d go home to his family or something. I didn’t ask.”

Stephen didn’t know, Burt decided. He turned and strode away without another word because he knew someone who did. He was getting ahold of Tina Cohen-Chang if he had to knock down her door to do it.

_*_*_

It took Kurt some time to chase Blaine down, having to ask quite a few people where they’d seen him last and being met with cold looks and outright hostility from a few. He sighed as the dark haired omega he didn’t know the name of left him standing in the middle of the hall, her pert nose in the air as she strode away. He’d just been rather snootily informed that her job was to clean, not keep tabs on the Alpha, and that any true mate of his wouldn’t need to ask _her_ where he was. Word about the events at breakfast had obviously gotten around and it seemed that once again not only was he the talk of the pack, but most of them were displeased with him. Sighing he turned and looked around the mostly empty hall but it seemed like each of the omegas were going out of their way to avoid making eye contact with him. He wasn’t going to get any help from there.

Okay then maybe now was a good time to start thinking more like a lycan and rely less on what he old Kurt would do. He had no idea whether he was Blaine’s true mate or not but they were bonded and he _was_ lycan so maybe he had the ability to find Blaine on his own. Okay so was it like talking mind to mind? Because that was fairly easy, only a matter of thinking _at_ the person he wanted to speak to; but would it work when he had no idea where the person he wanted to speak to was, or if he was even close enough to hear? He knew the mind to mind connection was affected by distance. If Blaine was in town he’d just be tossing his thoughts into the wind, but it was worth a shot.

_‘Blaine?’_ He tried and waited, but it wasn’t any really big shock to him when he didn’t receive any response. He glanced around to confirm that yes they were all watching him, still going about their chores but there was no missing the superfluous glances they cast his way. Gritting his teeth in irritation he turned, thinking to head towards the school and look for Allie, and nearly bumped face first into Adam.

“Kurt! Hi.” The tall blond caught him as he stumbled, his hands warm against Kurt’s arms as he set him to rights. “Sorry I was lost in thought. I should have been looking where I was going.”

“Well I wasn’t doing any better so I guess we’ll just call it even,” Kurt excused him, flushing a little as he stepped back, because it seemed to him that this close he could feel Adam’s body radiating heat and it was more than a bit distracting.

_Is he always this hot?_ He wondered and it was too late when he realized he’d let that thought slip out into the open because Adam smiled at him, amused and a tad smug. Since the thought was already out there Kurt saw no reason not to address it. Gesturing to Adam’s taller frame he clarified, “I meant in temperature. You’re radiating like a furnace.”

“Ah, I’m glad you think so, at least I know this isn’t one way chemistry.” Adam’s grin widened when Kurt narrowed his eyes at him the blond laughed and explained, “I’m not any hotter than usual. You’re just digging my vibe a bit more. Something must have really got you charged this morning.”

Kurt flushed, couldn’t help it no matter how hard he fought it. Never mind that he could smell Blaine all over himself, and surely Adam could too, Adam had just called him out for still being horny and attracted to him on top of it. Mutual chemistry he’d called it. Well, Kurt supposed that was fair. Adam was attractive, fun, and he’d been one of the few to show him kindness from the beginning. If he was going to go around digging peoples vibes all day Adam wasn’t a bad choice. But he’d already chosen Blaine, only _wanted_ Blaine really. That was one of the problems Flint and the others had with Blaine’s courtship of him, he remembered, the fact that Kurt hadn’t been chained to the den to push out pups yet. Well he wasn’t going to roll over and play like this was 1752 instead of the twenty-first century but as long as he was doing things a bit more the lycan way he could at least establish that they’d made some sort of commitment to each other.

“That would be Blaine,” he admitted more for the statement of it than Adam’s need to know. “Who I’m looking for, but I was informed ever so helpfully by one of the staff that if I were any good at this whole mate thing I’d be able to find him on my own.”

“Well they didn’t lie. If you were Blaine’s mate you could.”

“And how is that?” Kurt asked when Adam wasn’t any more forthcoming.

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to tell you where he is?”

“Yes,” Kurt replied tersely. “But I didn’t ask what would be simplest.”

“Ah, so you’re asking me to help you find Blaine, specifically in a way that would only further cement the growing bond between you,” Adam mused. He tilted his head and stepped closer to Kurt who had to fight the urge to step back. “Something that wouldn’t do me any favors at all and more than likely lose me the chance of ever knowing if we could have been amazing together and sired a thousand beautiful cubs?”

Kurt wondered how his answer would be received if he answered in the affirmative. Adam was an alpha, they had a good _vibe_ , the moon was waxing and everyone knew Blaine hadn’t staked an official claim on him. It wasn’t that he feared Adam, not exactly, but Adam had been good to him so far and Kurt hoped to continue a friendship with him. That would be hard if this conversation went a bad way. And still, he knew what he wanted and it wasn’t up to him to figure out Adam’s reaction. Adam’s reaction was entirely up to him.

“Yes,” Kurt said biting back a grin at Adam’s a hundred percent fake pout. “It looks like it.”

The alpha made a thoughtful noise but didn’t answer otherwise, watching Kurt closely as he sobered. When he finally spoke he asked, “May I ask you one thing?” Kurt nodded and Adam stepped even closer, his heat all but reaching out and smothering Kurt now. It was hard to breathe with him so close, and Kurt had the urge to tilt his head back and bare his neck, but knowing what that meant now he kept his body stiff and straight.

“Have you thought this through?” Adam asked. “As it stands you can still leave here. Blaine will suffer but he will recover in time. He may never love again but he will be alive to lead us. But if you sleep with him I doubt there will be any going back for either of you.”

“We’ve already agreed he won’t bite me.”

“A bite doesn’t make a mate Kurt.” At Kurt’s frustrated look Adam gestured to the hall around them, or maybe the house as a whole, and said “We mate for life and we are hunted in the majority of the world as demons. How do you think we’ve survived as a species if we could claim only once?”

“What?” Kurt gapped. Everything he’d ever heard talked about the intensity of the mating bond was about how rare it was for one partner to even survive the leaving of another, let alone fathom entering another claim. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying what needs to be said. Second claims are not popular, for the obvious reason that they are not based on love and that most wolves who lose their mates would rather die than live without them, let alone claim another. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t possible Kurt, because the bite is just a binding. It’s a tool and it has nothing to do with what makes a mate true.”

Kurt’s heart was sinking into his gut, thundering the whole way down as Adam’s words sank in.

“So you see Kurt there is no magic line to avoid. You can’t simply rely on not getting bit if leaving here is what you want. If you truly wish for a happy life without Blaine then you must keeping your heart in a place where it’s possible to live happily without him.” Why did something seemingly so simple sound so incredibly difficult when Adam said it like that Kurt wondered even as the blond alpha stepped closer, his lips lowering to hover much too close to Kurt’s for comfort.

“So I’ll ask you again, have you thought it through?” Adam just paused there; close enough to kiss at the slightest sign from Kurt and Kurt gulped back the panic rising up in him. He hadn’t thought about it this deeply but he couldn’t say that the pieces hadn’t been there for him to put it together, or that he hadn’t been warned. This was what Jeff had been trying to tell him, that it wasn’t about whether or not Blaine bit him; it was about how they felt about each other. They could not allow their feelings to develop to a place that they could never return from. If they did they’d be each other’s true mate no matter where they were or who they were with because a wolf only mated once.

It was as he stood there considering, remembering the things Blaine had told him that morning and the feel of Blaine’s body over his, the way his hand felt in Kurt’s, the sound of his voice as he murmured pack stories that sounded like fairytales, that Kurt realized he wouldn’t leave. He wasn’t ready to admit what that could mean but he embraced it just the same.

“I have,” he finally answered, nodding slowly to himself as he accepted the decision. Adam drew back and Kurt looked to his unreadable face and asked with purpose, “How do I find him?”

_*_*_

_After the fall of Uther, Bertanand Mac Murchadha became king of the seven lands but he could not hold all of the lands and their various rulers in his command as Uther had done. For every man that called him a savior there was another who called him usurper. It was these folks who whispered that Mac Muchadha was guilty of the murder of his daughter, that it was he who pushed her from the tower when he’d discovered that she had lain with his enemy. There were some who had lived in Uther’s palace who swore by the love between Uther and lady Igraine and swore that among the Pendragon she had been no prisoner but granted the title of Queen. It was also said that before her father pushed her from the tower, with the blood of her mate still on his hands, that she clutched Uther’s crown in her hands and pronounced a curse; the crown would shatter amongst her blood and bone, and the throne would know no true king until her blood returned to claim it._

_Whether a man believed in the power of the curse or not, many years passed and the seven lands could not be unified under one king. There was constant warring as every titled man in Uther’s kingdom with a drop of Mac Muchadha blood argued a claim to the throne. And so it was, with King Mac Muchadha’s head at the start, that the time the common people called the Rain Of Kings (for they came and they went as rain storms) began._

_It was during Kings Rain that Ian journeyed to the place of his birth, a lake whose waters were clear as glass and whose depths were deeper than any ocean. He knew what simple men did not, that the water was merely a curtain between two worlds, a veil to hide the land of magic from the eyes of men. He had journeyed to Avalon as a young man, after the death of his mother Aden, instructed on her last breath to seek out the Lady of The Lake. On that day Ian had met his destiny when a beautiful woman named Nimue had risen from the shore and offered to teach him magic._

_“Think carefully Ian, for this is not a gift without cost. In return for this knowledge and the greatness it will bring you, you will devote your life to the task of my choosing. You will be denied many of the comforts of other men. You will never know the love of a family and no place shall you call home. Nor shall your soul find rest until it is completed. You will grow old and see the passing of all you come to love. It is no small burden to bear.”_

_Standing in the lake waters with the guardian of the veil that day Ian had known two things to be true. He knew first that he would never be able to rest again in the land of mortal men, for Avalon now sang in his blood and seduced his heart with its mysteries. Even this meager touch was enough to open his eyes to what would be, and he saw tangled in the threads of time that second thing for which he was certain. He would never know a greater love than the love he would bear for the Lady of The Lake, and always would he be separated from her._

_And so, having seen what no other man could see, Ian embraced his destiny and became the wizard men call Merlin. On that day during King’s Rain he stood again at her shore, as he had done many times in the hundreds of years since he had left her tutelage, and waited for her to come to him. He knew her arrival first by the gentle lapping of waves at his feet, her touch as tender as the love she bore him._

_“What makes the great Merlin’s heart so heavy?”_

_“The land is torn by war and death and rather than heed good council the people look to a king to restore peace. They are like sheep Nimue, bleating and blind to do anything but follow the man with the mightiest sword and prettiest speeches.”_

_“They are only human Ian, you cannot expect them to be more than they are.”_

_“I can. They are capable of being so much more than they are. Arthur grows taller every day and his goodness surpasses even that of his mother.”_

_“And you think Arthur does not look to others to point him towards what is good? You have made his mother’s memory lord over him Ian, and he shall serve it well, but he too is human. It will only break your heart to forget.”_

_“I do not forget Nimue. How can I when his mortality taunts my every waking thought?”_

_“You do forget, just as you forget that you yourself are only a man and must eventually fail. It is something I remind myself often, that my Ian is just a man.”_

_“Aye, Nimue I am one man and Arthur is but a boy. He is out of time to grow. They need a king but they will not accept a boy on the throne, especially a boy of Uther’s blood. He will be slain Nimue and everything will be for naught.”_

_“And this is why you come to me?” The Lady of The Lake asked, having foreseen the purpose of Ian’s visit before he ever stepped on her shore. And still her heart did strange things, needing to hear the words he spoke next._

_“Only a portion, dear Nimue. I would come to you for any and every reason and even no reason at all.”_

_“What would the Merlin have of me?” She asked what she already knew._

_“I would have your help making a boy a king.”_

_And it was that day that the lady Nimue drew from the depths of the lake a sword by the name of Excalibur. By that sword would the people know the one true king, and by it would men of every race and creed be unified, for Excalibur could pierce the heart of anything living without ever touching flesh._

_And so it came to be that Ian set the sword into a great stone and told the people of the seven lands that any who should pluck it from that stone would be king; but he knew what they did not. The sword and all its power would only answer to the blood of Arthur._

_*_*_

Blaine only ever visited the family crypt when it was necessary. It was an underground structure, built deep beneath the house, and though there were those who knew of its existence, few knew of the door hidden behind the tomb of his ancestor Andrew McMorrow. The number of people who knew about that doors existence was down to two, and Blaine made sure never to open the door unless he was sure to be alone. There were spells in place to protect it either way; the cost to enter was blood, the hidden lever would only give way after he cut his palm and pressed his bloodied hand to the stone.

Behind the door was a narrow hall lit by torch light, their blue flames giving off no heat and flickering softly as they bathed the stone passage in cool blue light. At the end of the passage was a single chamber, its open doorway guarded only by a thin wall of blue flame. Stepping through the fire always sent a chill up through Blaine’s legs, a chill so deep it never failed to wring a desperate gasp out of him and leave him burning for long minutes after. He didn’t really want to know what would happen to anyone who didn’t pass the fires judgment.

The chamber was brightly lit, in contrast to the passage that led to it, the torches within it flaming brilliant gold and lighting up the colorful tapestries that decorated the walls. Each told the tale of the Alpha’s that had passed through his line. To his right was Blaine’s grandfather Devon and to his left was his own father Julian. Down the wall they went and there in the center, taking up the entire north wall, was Arthur’s banner, immense in comparison to the rest and richly woven. There were small statues standing beneath each banner, each of them with hands posed to offer up some treasure from that Alpha’s era.

In front of the red and gold banner of the first Mac Muchadha Alpha (McMorrow after it was Anglicized) there stood a statue of Arthur. Standing toe to toe with it as he was the statue stood a few inches taller than Blaine, the carved eyes of the long dead king boring sightlessly into him. Arthur’s hands were the only hands not offering up a treasure from the past, for the treasure he held had to be taken and could only truly be taken by one. Arthur’s stone hands gripped the ornate hilt of a sword.

Blaine had only ever held it twice, once on his thirteenth birthday when his father first revealed to him the secret of the crypt and one more on the day he’d picked it up from beside his father’s fallen form.

Never had there been an occasion to use that sword, and it was every Alphas hope that there never would be, but Blaine had been taught how just as he would teach his own children. He had come there that day because he had invited his enemy into his home, because there was an unknown threat drawing closer and closer and some instinct warned him that for what was to come he would need it. He stared at the gleaming silver blade and hoped that he was wrong. Wearing the sword wasn’t easy, and not without its own dangers. He cast his eyes to his father’s tapestry, the yellow and black banner etched with highlights of Julian’s greatest moments, and he remembered instead the way power had driven him mad.

Sometimes Blaine was very glad that he could only come here alone. Had any of the others been there with him they would have known how very afraid this room and _that_ sword made him, how very much he feared the day he’d have to wear it again. Wearing Excalibur had been like etching the world into his skin, akin to taking a swallow of the universe, the single most intoxicating and unbearable experience of his life. He feared he wasn’t strong enough. He was no Arthur. He was the son of a mad man and had already proven once that his anger could prove poisonous and that he could be swayed to cruelty by it. He had to hope that he wouldn’t be called to use the sword, that there was time to have an heir and teach them to be a far better person than he knew himself to be.

His child would be half Kurt after all, and that thought gave him all the hope in the world. No sooner had he thought it then did he feel something bright flare in his chest, an insistent tugging beginning in his center and spreading out. He raised his head in shock as he came to grips with the strange sensation. He had told only Wes of his destination of course, and yet somehow Kurt was approaching, his nearness calling to Blaine with every step closer that he took. Wonder quickly followed when he realized that if Kurt was approaching the crypt it could only mean one of two things. One, it was possible that Wes had told Kurt he was paying his respects to the dead in the family crypt, which wasn’t impossible and honestly most probable all things considered.

Or Kurt was pulling them together, heart to heart, which would explain why his was thudding so hard and every nerve in his body was urging him to _go_.

Blaine didn’t bother to give it anymore thought than that. He raced out of the chamber and this time when he passed through the blue flames they roared high as if they would consume him and he nearly stumbled to his knees at the sudden sensation of cold that shot through him, as if he’d been doused in ice water. He blinked in bafflement at the tingling sensation it left behind, actually pleasurable in contrast to the aching burn he was used to. He didn’t linger to wonder about it, his heart still pounding strongly in his chest and issuing out the command to go to Kurt, who he knew was waiting at the door of the passage without having to know why.

When he pressed his hand to the stone to release the door it rolled open with a loud grinding of stone on stone. Blaine saw Kurt, who was standing on the other side, tense and step backward with a startled yelp. Blaine stepped through the doorway and let it close behind him, his eyes only for Kurt as Kurt stared back at him breathing heavily where he stood backed against Andrew’s tomb.

When what felt like an age had passed with nothing but the sound of their breathing, Blaine couldn’t take the silence anymore, couldn’t take how tight his heartstrings felt—like the whole organ was trying to pull out of his chest— so he took a single step towards him and called, “Kurt?”

Kurt closed the distance between them in a single stride and Blaine seemed to know to reach for him before he even moved, because almost as soon as Kurt’s body was pressed against his, Blaine’s arms were wrapping around Kurt’s waist and Kurt’s arms were wrapping around his neck and his senses were overwhelmed with the smell and taste of him as their lips met in kiss that just seemed to grow deeper and deeper the longer they went at it.

He could feel Kurt’s heart pounding against his rib cage, feel the way his answered beat for beat until they had both slowed and the roaring in their ears had subsided. It happened around the same time they were forced to break away for breath and Blaine just let his brow rest against Kurt’s and tried to focus on drawing air into his lungs. He was shaking like a wet dog and grinning like an idiot when Kurt finally caught his breath enough to speak.

“Found you.” Blaine laughed and Kurt dipped his head to nuzzle his cheek. “You’re hard to track down Anderson. Nobody wanted to tell me where you were.” Blaine’s heart leapt again at this news and Kurt’s eyes widened even as Blaine felt his respond in kind.

“Well no one but Wes would actually know. I don’t broadcast the existence of this place.” And because he just absolutely had to be a hundred percent sure he bit his lip and asked just a tad too eagerly, “how did you find me?”

Kurt smiled at him in response, his eyes lowering shyly as he confessed, “I followed my heart. Literally, because that was the strangest thing I’ve ever experienced. I was scared it was going to go flying out of my chest like something out of a horror film if I didn’t follow it.”

Blaine could see the pretty way his cheeks flushed pink even in the dark of the crypt and when Kurt didn’t look back up at him he suddenly couldn’t take another second without looking into the eyes that had haunted his every waking moment since that day in the pet rescue. He nuzzled the soft skin of Kurt’s neck and when he lifted his gaze Blaine raised his head to meet it.

“I’m glad you did.” He said no more than that and Kurt’s answering smile was a bit scared, but it was heartfelt.

“Me too,” he replied softly before he lowered his head for another kiss, slower than the last but they felt it no less deeply.

When they had pulled apart again Blaine fought a brief internal battle over whether or not he should warn Kurt against tracking him through the bond, and though he could only imagine his ancestors rolling over in their graves he stepped away from Kurt’s all too addictive embrace and sighed.

“I’m glad you managed to find me, but it’s probably better if you don’t do that again. It’s not exactly safe.”

“I know,” Kurt admitted and Blaine raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Adam made that really clear before he showed me what to do. I could have waited to talk to you. I knew the risks.”

“And you took it anyway?” Blaine asked. He was too close to Kurt’s mind, and now his heart, not to know that Kurt still didn’t feel ready to be his mate, so he had to wonder what had been behind the decision.

“Yes?” Kurt replied with a helpless shrug. “Blaine, Adam told me that if I loved you enough my heart could find yours, like we’re magnetized. Do you have any idea how that feels to me, how you feel to me, after years of loneliness and heartbreak? I can feel your heart right now like we were made together and…” Kurt’s voice cracked and fell away as he blinked moisture out of his eyes. He took a bolstering breath and continued on, stronger this time, “Upstairs, I realized that what I wanted most about my old life was to feel safe again. I started to wonder why that mattered so much; because it’s not like that life was going so fantastically that I’d be crazy to leave it. It was okay, and the worst thing about that is I used to believe I was meant for something more than okay. The greatest I’ve ever felt is on stage and with you, this incredible being that dropped into my life and made me feel like I wasn’t alone, like it was okay that I hadn’t achieved all my dreams, like it would always be okay so long as we had each other.

“But this is a big choice, this is more important than any decision I’ve ever made and I just don’t know if I’m made for everything that’s behind that door you just walked through. And I have to be, because it’s not just you and I who suffers if I’m not.”

Kurt curled his hands in Blaine’s collar and Blaine hugged him close, finding balance in the simple heat and solidity of his body, letting the rhythm of their hearts soothe away the worries he knew they both carried and lighten the weight of too big a choice and too little time.

“It’ll be okay,” he reassured, pressing a gentle kiss to Kurt’s neck. “Kurt, you really can do anything. Anything you set your mind to, and I’ll always be here to help you.” Kurt’s arms slipped around his neck again and he squeezed Blaine tightly to him.

“I know.” Kurt accompanied the words with a last desperate squeeze before he stepped back again, hands to Blaine’s shoulders as he braces himself to look the slightly shorter man in the eye. “Which is why I want you to let me be the one to fight Flint.” It took Blaine a moment to process that information and when he did he sputtered.

“What? Kurt no, he’s a seasoned fighter. You’ve barely started combat training!”

“So give me the crash course, but either way I want to be the one to do it.”

“Kurt,” Blaine insisted with an aggravated little growl that had Kurt’s hands tightening on his shoulders and his lips dipping into frustrated frown.

“Blaine!” Kurt answered right back. “I sat at a table with the highest ranking alphas in your pack and told them where to shove their opinions and that if they didn’t like it they could just bite me. I’m not sorry, but it’s not surprising they’re pissed. I talked the talk and now I have to walk the walk. I _have_ to.”

“No you don’t. You’re a protégé, and not the first one to talk smack he couldn’t back up. That doesn’t mean anyone expects you to enter a fight you have no hope of winning,” Blaine tried to tell him. “That’s why I’m allowed to substitute for you in the first place.”

“A second ago you were telling me I could do anything and that you’d help me do it.” That had Blaine’s mouth clamping shut and Kurt took a little breath to calm himself before he went on. “Blaine I’m not just a protégé and you know it. I’m the outsider you brought here who represents danger and painful memories. I don’t fit in and I’m not playing by any of their rules. Blaine every time you look at me it reminds them of everything they stand to lose if I don’t measure up.” Kurt bit his lip again and Blaine felt his fear wrapping around both their hearts, sticky and cloying. It didn’t surprise him when Kurt whispered, “every time I look at you I’m reminded too,” but it still made him ache.

It went against every instinct to protect Kurt that he had (and Blaine had so very many of those it really wasn’t funny) but Kurt was right. He had to let Flint hurt him—he couldn’t help the snarl that twisted his lips at just the thought— because even if Kurt didn’t win the fight, his willingness would still earn their respect. And maybe Kurt was right about how dangerous he was, because none of that really mattered to Blaine. What mattered to him was that doing this would prove to Kurt that he was capable. He’d do just anything to show Kurt how strong he was.

_*_*_ 

“Lina!” Mercedes called from the kitchen doorway and Lina looked up in time to catch her coworker’s dark scowl. “Somebody’s here for you, and he’s kicking up a fuss about it.” Lina hastily finished scraping the plates she was carrying into the trash and dumped them in the bin for dirty dishes, ignoring the wide questioning eyes of their dishwasher. Izzy was lycan like her, Mercedes being one of the few humans in town willing to work at known lycan owned establishment.

“Kurt?” she asked as she followed Mercedes back toward the front of the house. She’d been with the pack for years and even still Kurt was the only one she counted on to visit her while at work. Lina preferred to keep to herself when she could. Social situations made her anxious, fearful of her human past being discovered and she was always wary of talking to males (alpha’s especially). While she couldn’t say that she wasn’t lonely, it was better to suffer from loneliness than frequent panic attacks; which was why she hesitated when Mercedes shook her head.

“Honey if Kurt wanted to see you that bad I’d just let him back here. It’s this other guy, gave me the creeps so I wasn’t about to let him bother you, but he said it was about your family.”

Lina froze beside the registers and her eyes flew to the man Mercedes pointed to sitting at table seven. He was a dark haired alpha she recognized from previous visits to the café, a Nick Duval. She remembered he used to come in with Jeff Sterling a lot, back before it was learned the small band of strays were MacTere and their Alpha had refused to submit to Wes in Blaine’s absence.

“M-my family?” Her mind raced. What would one of the MacTere want with her and what could they possibly know about her family? She’d been so careful. No one knew her here! Not even Kurt knew everything, so how had this stranger figured it out? She always feared that her father still searched for her, could not forget what plagued her sleep at night, but she doubted that was Duval’s purpose here today. The enmity between her family and the MacTere ran too long and too deep.

“Yeah he said to tell you he had news about someone named Lorenzo. You know him?” Mercedes asked and Lina could only nod numbly.

“He’s my brother.” It was real then. Her family _was_ still looking for her and now she’d been found. She was overwhelmed by the urge to curl into a ball and shut down, panic welling up inside her so strongly it was crippling, but then she remembered Benito in the back room, tucked in his basket and gnawing happily on his stuffed bear. She forced herself to breathe, to remain in control, because it wasn’t just her anymore. She had to keep functioning for her son’s sake if not her own.

“Is everything alright Boo? I thought your family was back in Italy?” Mercedes asked and Lina cleared her throat before she attempted to answer.

“They are. Something must have happened. I should go talk to him.” She didn’t want to but she couldn’t just run. She had to know if her brothers, or god forbid her father even, were close and where the threat was coming from or else she might go running blindly into danger.

“Alright, I can cover for you for a couple minutes. Tell me if you need anything okay?” Mercedes was watching her with concern, obviously noticing how pale and still she’d gotten but Lina just nodded and forced her lips into a smile. She thanked the human woman and then she wiped her trembling hands on her apron and went to go sit with Nicolas Duval.

The aristocratic looking alpha watched her with a hint of a smirk as she approached. His dominant air made the skin on her arms pebble with goose bumps and she couldn’t quite stop her trembling but she clenched her hands in her skirt and forced herself to remain in her seat.

“Lina de’Medici.” He said the name she hadn’t used in close to four years the French way, betraying his family origins, and she winced at the first syllable. The alpha tsked his tongue at her. “How does it feel to hear that name after—four years is it?” Lina didn’t answer. She knew this alpha wasn’t really looking for one. Nick reached for the glass of water in front of his plate and took a slow slip, as if it contained a rich wine instead of simple mountain water. “It probably terrifies you. I say that like I don’t know when the truth is I could smell your terror from across the room.”

“The Duval’s of MacTere enjoy terror,” she acknowledged without inflection. She had learned at the hands of her mate that it didn’t matter whether her words were brave or whether they were pleading. Alphas like these fed only on the pain of others, and pain could always be wrung out of her. The one thing her amato had never been able to stand was indifference.

“From our enemies? Definitely,” Nick agreed with a thoughtful nod and Lina fought not to let her anger at the alpha’s breezy acceptance show.

“It is unfortunate then that you are so bad at making friends.” Nick barked a laugh at her response and took another sip of water. Opening her hands Lina silently counted her fingers, the simple task helping her focus on something other than the need to fall to the floor beneath the alpha’s dominant gaze. She was proud that at least her voice had stopped shaking when she asked, “Do you truly have news of Lorenzo or was that merely the honey for your trap?”

“He’s dead.” He said it so bluntly, so carelessly, that for a moment Lina could barely comprehend his words. Lorenzo, dead? What did this smirking devil know of Lorenzo, her gemello, her beautiful brother with his charming smile and beautiful dreams? This evil creature in front of her should not even be allowed to speak his name. She made a sound, a wounded cry, and her hands flew to her mouth to hold it in because indifference was her only weapon against a man like this. But she could not see past her tears and so she curled herself inward to hide them, gasping for air as she swallowed back the sounds of weakness she knew this man coveted.

“Why?” She asked, hating the quiver in her voice. Why had they taken something so wonderful from the world when Lorenzo had never been any sort of threat to them? The alpha’s face darkened with anger and his lip curled in a hateful snarl.

“Why did we kill a Hunter? A butcher from the holy house of butchers?”

“He was no Hunter! He was a musician, a simple man who only wanted to create beautiful things!” She insisted, her voice strengthening with her rage as she snapped her head up to finally meet the alpha’s gaze, unable to stop the volcanic shaking of her body as she growled at him. She knew this man would never be any friend of her family, as she knew that no wolf ever would be, for as long as the Medici family had held power in Europe, longer still had they served the church and dedicated themselves to the eradication of those that centuries of Popes had declared to be unholy demons. Duval was not wrong. They were indeed the holy house of butchers, but Lorenzo had never been a killer and neither had she. She because of her father’s protectiveness and Lorenzo because his blindness and his tender heart had made him a constant disappoint to their father and a poor Hunter.

And still they had murdered him, just because his name was Medici, and if ever Lina had questioned whether she could trust to tell the truth of who she was, she knew now that she could never. There wasn’t a lycan alive who wouldn’t want her dead if they knew, even Blaine (especially Blaine her terrified mind supplied). Her own mate had hated her more than he could manage to love her.

“True,” Nick took his time answering her words, accompanying his with a slow shrug and another sip from his water. “But he was your twin and if you believe the madman who orchestrated having his throat slit, his blood was the best fuel for the seeking spell your father used to find you.” 

Even Lina’s rage over her brother’s death cooled at the cold horror Duval’s words poured over her. She did not know what made her sicker, the knowledge that her father was so intent to find her that years could not dim his anger at her betrayal, that his hate was so poisonous he would sacrifice his own son to see the blight on the family honor destroyed, or the knowledge that she had been found and that they would come for her and Benito.

She sucked in a terrified breath and rose out of her seat, her instinct to get to her son and see to his safety overriding everything else, but Nick’s hand shot out to grab her wrist and hold her in an iron grip. She could feel her hair stand on end as her teeth grew heavy and sharp in her mouth, her eyes wide as she snarled at the alpha. There was no room for terror, no room for subservience, when there was danger everywhere and her child was out of her sight.

“Let go of my arm or lose your hand MacTere!” Eyes were flying to them now, Mercedes at the hostess station pausing to watch them with a darkening expression.

“Lina,” she was a hair away from lunging across the table and taking her chances at ripping up his face, but something about the low desperate way he said her name gave her pause. “I’m the only friend you have right now and if you want any chance of you or your cub making it out of this alive you’ll shut up and listen because we are running out of time.”

“Why would I trust you!” She snapped. “My family destroyed yours. You are no friend.”

“Because I’m the only thing standing between you and death right now!”

“Why! Why not just let death have me?! What does a MacTere gain from saving me?”

“Dominos,” Nick hissed but the words didn’t make sense. At Lina’s confused expression he tightened his grip and spat contemptuously at her. “People are about to start dying and they’re going to fall like dominos. I care about someone who is caught in the lineup and that means unfortunately for me that I have to care about you.” Lina let the words process but still nothing was making sense. She’d be stupid to believe this man when he had every reason to want her to die a horrible death. She was stupid for wasting even a second in getting Benito somewhere safe.

“Let go,” she said again and it was like Nick exploded.

“Listen!” he shouted and every last voice in the café went hushed. “You stupid bitch, if this is to big for your pathetic little mind to handle, let me just tell you how it’s going to be and you can just—” Nick never finished because at that moment Mercedes reached them and her bellow was loud enough to shake the windows. Lina had the fleeting thought that it was impressive for someone human.

“Excuse me, but I am not about to stand here and let you come up in this café and spread that vile misogynist shit. Let go of my girl and take your creepy ass out of my café before I call the cops.” Nick opened his mouth but Mercedes raised a hand and went on heedless of the alpha’s murderous glare. “And before you start acting all big and bad I don’t care what you are! Because if you even look at her on your way out you’re going to need a whole squad to pull me off your busted up behind once I get to kicking it. Now get out.”

Nick bared his canines at the dark skinned woman who stood glaring back at him, her hands gripping a stack of menus so tightly her knuckles were bloodless. She was afraid, Lina could smell it. Mercedes would be stupid not to be scared of an alpha wolf on the brink of attack but she didn’t budge, staring the man down and not even glancing behind herself when several other patrons, one of them not even a member of the pack, moved to stand behind her. Lina knew that it was the sight of the others primed for battle that made Duval snap his jaws shut and stand slowly. As he stood he glared down at Mercedes, his eyes promising retribution, but it was into Lina’s mind that his thoughts slipped, heated with urgency.

_“Your father is still in Rome, even the house of Medici can’t take down Anderson without some planning, but he’ll come eventually make no mistake. But it’s not him you’ve got to worry about. The wizard your father hired to find you was under the control of a master vampire, someone I promise you is more dangerous than anyone you’ve ever known. He’s the one that wanted to find you and he wants my pack to get you for him, but now that Sebastian knows about you he just wants you and the kid dead. If you had any brain at all you’d get the hell out of here before someone gets there hands on you… or Anderson finds out he’s been protecting the daughter of Benito Medici. He’ll kill you and save Sebastian the trouble.”_

The alpha departed without further comment, bumping rudely into Mercedes on his way out, and Lina sprang up out of her seat like an arrow released from an archers grip, practically flying into the backroom. She didn’t stop until Benito was in her arms, the tiny cub yipping indignantly at being torn away from his toy. Hushing him with soft sounds she tried not to hug him too tightly, stroking her shaking hands up his spine against the grain of his fur. His tiny frame spasmed in her arms as he began to shift to his shape, his angry shrieks heralding when he had finished.

“Down!” His little voice shrieked as he pouted through a glare at her, he twisted his torso to reach vainly for the bear in the basket and kicked his feet for emphasis as he demanded as imperiously as a three year old could, “Put me down mama.”

“Shhh, Piccolo” She quieted him with gentle strokes over his back. She reached one handed into the basket and brought to him the stuffed toy she had mended a hundred times over, ripped daily it seemed from his ever growing teeth, and he crushed the bear to his chest with a satisfied little smile and she smiled tearfully back at him. “So much fuss. Does it surprise you when you change?”

Benito ducked his head against her chest, nodding shyly as he mumbled into her dress, “I don’t like that surprise. It makes Pooh scared.” He kissed the top of the bears head, the same way she kissed his when he was upset and she had to blink back her tears. She lowered her head to plant a kiss in the middle of his mop of curls and shuddered.

“Well you tell him not to be afraid Piccolo. I am here. I will not let anything harm either of you.” She promised it, but in her heart she despaired because she didn’t know at all how she could keep it. There was nowhere to go that they couldn’t be found and if they weren’t safe in Westerville they weren’t safe anywhere. But Nick was right. When the others found out the truth they would despise her, they would demand she be run out if not outright killed. She knew Blaine wouldn’t kill her but he wouldn’t let her stay either; he wouldn’t be able to afford to. She and Benito would be lost. She knew that now. There was no more use in running.

“Mama why are you crying?” Benito asked, his fear and upset washing through her and she did her best to project calm and comfort to him as she continued to rock him in her arms.

“Mama needs help Piccolo,” she admitted and she started when Mercedes’ voice, followed by the woman herself, came barging into the room.

“I’ll say. What the hell is going on Lina?” The other woman came to stand beside her, glowering when Lina remained silent. “Look I never said anything about the scars, or the way you flinch every time some dude so much as laughs too loud, because it wasn’t my business. I figured you’d been through some things, but if that guy is trying to hurt you, you’ve got to let someone know Boo. You shouldn’t have to handle that on your own. Let me help you.”

“You cannot help me Mercedes.” Lina appreciated the woman’s kindness, especially since she was human—soft and vulnerable and with every reason not to get involved— her kindness was more than Lina would have offered a lycan at her age. She had been so convinced once that they were all monsters. “But thank you. It is a family matter. Nick and I had a misunderstanding, nothing—”

“That’s bull,” Mercedes cut her off, grabbing her gently by the elbow and steering her over to a chair by the employee locker. “So I know we’re not best friends or anything, so I understand if you don’t want to tell me all of it, but you’ve got to tell someone. Okay? You deserve to feel safe and if someone out there isn’t making you feel safe, you gotta do what you gotta do. Tell me what would make you feel safe or who I gotta talk to and we’ll get it handled, but I’m not just going to walk away. Not after that.”

Safe was in Westerville, but other lycans were not safe. Safe was with Blaine, but Blaine wouldn’t protect her if he knew. Kurt had made her feel safe too...

Lina stilled as her mind began to race with ideas, an internal struggle blooming because what she was thinking just wasn’t fair to her new friend. Kurt had so many struggles of his own; it wasn’t fair to ask him to take on hers as well. But what else was she to do? They would not survive long on their own, not if everything Nick had said was true, and she would do anything to keep Benito safe, _anything_. They had all felt it on the full moon when Blaine found Kurt, they all saw the looks and felt their Alpha’s happiness radiating off of him anytime Kurt so much as smiled at him. And Kurt had been human like her. He knew what it was to lose his world, his control, his family… he knew nothing of hers. Kurt would not hate her. Yes, if she begged him for help he would stand up for her and it would anger the pack. It would put a wedge between him and Blaine and that just wasn’t fair… she was so bad, nothing but trouble. Kurt would start to hate her too. Who wouldn’t?

“Mama!” Benito whined in her arms. “Too tight.” She realized belatedly that she had begun to squeeze him and that her breathing had become labored as her heart sped up.

“Breathe girl, don’t hyperventilate.” Mercedes rubbed her back soothingly. “What do you need right now?”

So many things, Lina’s frantic mind thought. She wanted to feel safe, loved, taken care of, all the ways her beautiful amato had once made her feel, all the ways she was too afraid to let another alpha make her feel, the way she felt whenever Kurt gripped her hands and gave her such firm and gentle instructions; but Kurt was not here and she couldn’t depend on him for everything. He was not her mate and should not have to clean up her messes.

“Time,” she whispered. She just needed time to think, but she knew she was running out of it.

_*_*_

Sam Evans couldn’t get Kurt Hummel out of his head. It wasn’t that he was in love with the guy or anything, it was just that Sam’s mother had taught him how a good alpha should treat a submissive, and part of that was making sure they were safe. He’d thought Kurt was pretty good looking from the first minute he laid eyes on him at the Cheesecake Factory but Sam had been wandering since he was eighteen, so it wasn’t like he’d never met another attractive lycan before. Honestly he was kinda embarrassed about how strong he’d come onto Kurt their first meeting, but the guy had been practically dripping pheromones and it was pretty heady stuff. Yeah he’d pretty much made an ass of himself, and then when he’d tried to help Kurt out when he ran into him at the club he’d only managed to do it again.

Instead of protecting Kurt he’d let him run off and get himself tangled up in god only knew what. Sam had been asking around, because of the guilt, and it only made him feel more like crap when he discovered that Kurt wasn’t even really lycan. Well he was lycan biologically, but he’d been converted like only a month ago so Sam didn’t really think it counted for much. So apparently he’d felt up a brand spanking new convert, let him run off where any alpha could have taken advantage of him, and (if that Lopez chick he’d hooked up with was any credible source) let some big alpha over in Westerville actually snatch him up and drag him off. Talk about failing as an alpha.

Sam knew what his mother would have said. The only reason he hadn’t made a trip to Westerville yet was because it was Westerville and everybody knew you just didn’t cause trouble on the Anderson’s turf. He’d been raised on stories of Pack Westerville, the family that ruled there, and the school they’d built as a sanctuary for Lycan youth the world over. Tennessee was a hostile state, but Sam’s father had kept their little family alive by keeping them on the move. When his parents had been wounded by Hunters Sam had done what they asked and kept moving with his little brother and sister. Neither of his parents had wanted to send their children away for strangers to raise, even if it was safer, but a year of trying to keep two cubs alive in a hostile state had convinced Sam that maybe that was for the best. He was used to a rogue lifestyle but he’d only been eighteen and they were so small. In the end he’d rather have lost them to Dalton than to watch either one of them lose their lives, so they’d made the long journey to Ohio and that had been that.

Sam had always said he got by okay on his own but he was twenty-seven now and that just wasn’t true anymore. Nobody wanted to be a lone wolf forever, nobody, and Sam wasn’t sure he’d ever wanted to be one from the start, that was just sort of how it had worked out. So when he’d seen this incredibly sexy beta at work one day he’d kind of just flipped a little bit because how often did a guy meet a beta _that_ ready to bond? And the fact that Kurt was a guy didn’t bother him either. Sam didn’t mind guys. He liked guys as much as the next bisexual, even if he did have a preference for girls. He was just _so_ ready for a real home, for a family, and he knew he’d make a pretty awesome mate and a great dad. Stevie and Stacey kept telling him that in their letters, even though he felt like shit for abandoning them and not sticking around. They were the whole reason he’d decided to take a crummy job in Columbus in the first place. Stevie was sixteen now and Stacey was fifteen, both of them studying hard at school and enjoying being protégés. It scared him that his brother and sister would be adults in a few years and he’d have no idea who they were. He’d just wanted to be close to them again even if it meant going tame and living like a human.

“Have a good night Evans. You sure you don’t want me to call a cab?” Sam’s boss called to his departing back as he left work that night, and as Sam did every night he waved off the man’s concern. His mind was still wracked with indecision. He should grow a set of balls and go to Westerville and see his brother and sister if nothing else, even if they probably did resent him for letting five years go by since his last visit; and yes he should absolutely check in on Kurt and make sure some asshole hadn’t forced him into a bond. He had no idea what he’d do about it if that was the case but he shouldn’t just pretend like they’d never met.

The streets were scarce as he walked, people still too scared to be out at night with some crazed vampire on the loose but Sam knew how to take care of himself. So far the blood sucker had stuck to hunting humans, probably not stupid enough to risk taking on a lycan because there was no way in hell to take one of them down without a fight.

So when Sam heard a strange sound coming from behind the building he was passing it didn’t occur to him to be afraid or not to pause. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and perked his ears, listening intently to hear if the sound would come again. And there, he heard it again; a wet gurgling sound that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He glanced around the empty street noting that he was in front of the Palace Theater which he passed every day to and from work. He’d caught a show there with a date once even. The sound was distant, not to mention quiet, but he followed it to the right on Front St. and he knew by the sharp stink of blood filling his nose to turn again on Lynn St.

That was how Sam Evans found himself behind the Palace Theater staring at a man cloaked in black weeping over the crumpled form of a woman.

“Hey, is she alright?” he called out, taking steps toward the couple’s crouched forms before the words had even finished leaving his mouth. He ground to a halt when the dude looked up, because first off it wasn’t even a chick the dude was holding (looked like a drag queen) and second those gurgling sounds he’d heard weren’t sobs at all. Sam stared into the glowing red eyes of the vampire in horror, gapping at the sight of blood covering his mouth and chin, shivering when the guy licked his lips slowly and let the man he was holding crumple to the ground. Sam didn’t think he was alive because there was this huge chunk of his throat missing, like someone had been snacking on it.

Shit. _Shit shit shit shit shit_! He thought because he _would_ just happen to run into the crazy vampire stalking the city when he was buttoned up in his confining work uniform. But Sam kept his cool, breathing evenly and making no sudden movements as he slowly bent to untie his laces, keeping his eyes glued to the vampire a few short yards away. He was so primed to shift he was snagging his laces on his thickening nails, his whole body tingling with taught nerves as the vampire just sat there licking its lips, eyes boring into his with something disturbingly like glee. Sam tossed his shoes aside and undid his belt with quick deliberate movements, wondering why the guy hadn’t attacked yet, why he wasn’t being chased as he desperately tried to strip. The vampire grinned at him with bloodied teeth.

“Take your time Mr. Evans.” Sam froze as he heard the stranger say his name, because Sam didn’t hang with blood suckers and the guy _was_ a stranger, so how the fuck he knew his name Sam didn’t know. The guy outright giggled, rising slowly to an impressive height as his whole body wiggled with mirth. “Oh I know your name pretty boy, and I know a lot more than that. Not a whole lot of point in running since I know where you live. I was planning on stopping by in a few days but you know… plans, they go awry.” The vampire waved a pale hand as if gesturing to the situation and Sam tried not to freak out. Shirt off, pants down, those were easy things to figure out. He could figure out why some psycho blood sucker was trying to kill him later. He just had to focus on not getting killed.

“Are you ready to play Sammy?” The vampire asked with a gleeful clap and Sam gulped. He couldn’t let his fear get to him. He hadn’t survived this long by panicking when things got rough. Whoever the vamp was he was messing with the wrong stray. The vampire nodded as if Sam had answered his question and clapped his hands together, smartly this time. “Alright, pay attention because I’m about to explain the game. Sammy boy met the star of this little show and thought he was just daaaazaling,” the vampire drew the word out in sing song and Sam just waited. “Still thinking about him aren’t you Sammy? Well here’s how it works. You can run and hope I don’t catch you, and if I don’t you can see little Kurtie again and give him a message for me. Ask him if he’s watching the show _I’m_ putting on. It’s all for him you know. It hurts me that he’s not paying any attention.”

Kurt, Sam’s heart thundered at the realization. This was about Kurt?

“If I do catch you, well then of course you’ll be dead, but there is one bonus. You get a leading role kid.” The vampire waved to Sam’s chest area and then mimed writing letters in the air as he announced, “The Kurt Hummel Show’, etched in the best canvas there is. Can you see it? Everyone pays attention to skin when someone’s wearing it. Louder than a billboard I promise.” And then the vampire winked at him, weirdly the most disturbing thing yet, and fluttered his long eyelashes as he said almost coquettishly, “I’m gonna make you famous Sammy, the camera is gonna love you.”

Sam never shifted so fast in his life. He’d barely hit all fours when the vampire attacked.

*_*_*

Blaine had been holed up with Wes and David in his study for a couple of hours, leaving Kurt with nothing to do but pace the floor of Blaine’s bedroom because he wasn’t being allowed to go about his regular schedule until Quinn gave him the okay. He already knew he wasn’t getting any help in that department either because when Quinn heard he’d ignored doctor’s orders and gone tramping around the manor on his own (where anything could have happened if he’d fainted or fallen down a flight of stairs she’d yelled at him) she’d all but personally dragged him back to bed.

“Don’t tell me you’re fine. Clearly your concussion has scrambled your head if you’re even considering entering a battle ring with Flint Wilson. He’s been looking for a chance to chew you up since you got here, and if you keep this up I’m going to think you deserve whatever you get,” she’d said, but Kurt just figured that was her way of saying she was worried about him. Still, he did feel fine and he was anxious about the challenge. He was so not ready to fight a seasoned alpha, he should literally have started preparing years ago, so every minute wasted stuck on bed rest was only making him more anxious. Periodically he felt Blaine draw closer, holding him in that weird not physical—and yet so real Kurt could swear someone had wrapped him up in a hug—way that he could do, and while Kurt appreciated it nothing but getting out of this damn room and having something to do was going to truly make him feel better.

So it was a huge relief when there was a smart rap on the door and it swung open so fast that Kurt didn’t even have time contemplating telling whoever was on the other end of it to come in. But that was okay because he had scented Chandler almost as soon as the teenager had knocked.

“Thank god,” he exclaimed with sigh of relief. “Am I being allowed out of the tower now or is everyone still afraid I’ll break?” He expected to be caught up in a whirl of chatter but Chandler was not his usual self. The teenager was red in the face and practically vibrating with what Kurt realized was barely contained rage. His edges were actually blurring, like his skin was rippling back and forth over the line between man and something other, and it alarmed Kurt not because he didn’t think he could handle himself if Chandler lost control, but because he’d never seen his young friend so upset.

“Chandler?” The sound of his voice seemed to trigger something because something between a growl and a howl tore out of Chandler’s throat and Kurt actually leapt back he was so startled.

“I thought you were my friend Kurt! That’s the only reason I haven’t bit your ass already. I wanted to hear you say it, but I need you to shut up or I’m going to lose it and then Blaine will kill me and that will just really really upset my mom!”

So maybe it was weird to want to laugh when there was a deranged werewolf pissed off at you and seconds away from going out of control but Chandler was, well Chandler, just a kid who really didn’t want to upset his mom by getting murdered by his Alpha because he’d gone feral on… whatever he was to Blaine right now.

Right on time he felt Blaine wrap around him again, alarmed by Kurt’s sudden spike of unease.

_“You okay?”_ He asked and Kurt almost nodded before he realized that Blaine couldn’t see it. Or maybe he could, come to think again. Since Blaine could see through anyone in the pack at any given time if he wanted, he could probably see him through Chandler.

_“I’ve got it. Please don’t get all alpha on me and come storming in here. He’s upset about something and you really won’t help.”_

_“Well I suppose since you’re going to fight Flint I should let you handle Chandler... but I’m stepping in if there’s hair pulling.”_

_“I’m going to bite you the next time I see you if you keep up with that. Don’t think I won’t.”_

Yes, Kurt had to fight to keep a smile off his face as he thought that Blaine’s amusement was still the best sensation to feel over the bond.

Unfortunately Chandler saw it and thought Kurt was trying not to laugh at him. With a low growl the teen marched up to him, until they were toe to toe. He puffed out his chest and crossed his arms, and Kurt could see the wolf in his eyes when he bit out through bared teeth, “I might be just a kid to you Hummel but I’m not playing around here. I don’t care if Blaine gets mad at me and I don’t care if you’re twice as strong as me with your ridiculously toned biceps, I’ll kick your ass if you laugh at me and I’ll win because I love him and you don’t. He’s my mate not yours! You don’t touch him. Don’t even look at him! Are we clear?”

Kurt had a moment where he thought Chandler was talking about Blaine, a fleeting moment because that was just insane—but what wasn’t insane about this whole conversation—and his first instinct was to bite this arrogant little pup in the face, because who the hell did he think he was talking to and what was he _on_ , but then he realized Chandler wasn’t stupid enough to think himself in love with Blaine all of a sudden and even if he was, Kurt was a god damn adult and he wasn’t going to get in a slap fight with some kid over a guy for Christ’s sake. 

So, remaining the picture of calm and ignoring Blaine’s continued amusement rolling back and forth over his senses, Kurt carefully asked, “Chandler what is it you think I’ve done?”

“Don’t play dumb, Kurt! Stacey Evans told me she saw you!”

“Who the hell is Stacey Evans and _what_ is it you think she saw me do?”

“Stacy Evans is Stevie Evans sister and you don’t know her or Stevie because they’re omegas.” Chandler actually seemed to lose a bit of his thunder as he was forced to explain. If this whole conversation wasn’t so juvenile Kurt would have laughed. “Omegas have separate training when they become protégés. Their masters are other omegas and they learn different stuff like how to clean and be good mates or something… I don’t know.”

“Seriously?” Kurt arched a brow at him. That sounded so positively medieval he almost couldn’t even believe he’d heard it right, but then again considering how the pack seemed to view omegas and their role he absolutely could.

“The _point_ Kurt is that she saw you, so you can’t lie your way out of this.” Chandler regained his footing in the conversation and jabbed Kurt with a pointed finger.

“Chandler, I’m trying really hard here not to lose my temper, but if you don’t tell me what it is this girl supposedly saw me do, and with less poking, I’m going to kick you somewhere it really hurts.”

“She saw you kiss Adam!” Chandler honest to god stomped his foot as he shouted it and Kurt just couldn’t handle this. He wasn’t going to do this he just wasn’t. Chandler thought he’d kissed Adam? That was what had him acting like this was the set of Real House Wives (without any of the fabulous clothes to distract from the utter ridiculousness).

Wait!

“You think you’re in love with Adam?” Kurt demanded incredulously. “Chandler he’s my age!”

“I don’t care. I’m almost seventeen, not a baby. When I’m eighteen I’ll be fully mature and after I pass my trial I’ll be old enough to enter any claim I want, and what I want is Adam.” Chandler pointed to the collar around his throat for emphasis and now that he was putting it all together Kurt didn’t know why he hadn’t figured out that Chandler had it bad for the older alpha a whole lot sooner. “And he wants me too, even if he is all caught up in daddy guilt.”

Kurt blinked owlishly at him. He knew he shouldn’t but he just had to ask.

“What the _hell_ is daddy guilt?”

“You know…” Chandler waved his hand grandly, but Kurt didn’t know and when he just continued to stare Chandler sighed. “Don’t you get around Kurt? It’s when the parental figure gets all sad because ‘oh poor me, I’m stupidly hot and my amazing teen protégé is super sexy and sometimes I think about jumping his bones and people are gonna think I’m a big old creep’. Daddy guilt.”

“Wow…” Kurt opened and closed his mouth, and then decided that no. No he wasn’t going to touch any of that. “Okay, bypassing all of _that_ , this is a lesson in why you don’t believe every stupid thing you hear. I most certainly did not kiss Adam, no matter what Susey Evans—”

“Stacey.”

“— _Stacey_ Evans thinks she saw, and you’re sixteen and too young to be thinking about bonding with a man almost twice your age.”

“Technically he’s not twice my age.”

“Chandler!” Kurt growled, at the end of his rope and the protégé sighed.

“Okay, okay it’s just,” Chandler sighed one more time, this one long and heavy. When he looked back at Kurt his eyes were so earnest Kurt just couldn’t stay irritated with him. “If you were me, and if it were Blaine, would you honestly care how old he is? Kurt Adam is like… Adam is like oxygen and I just don’t have a choice here. I don’t even want one.” Any anger that Kurt still felt disappeared. Heaving a sigh of his own he pulled the younger beta into a hug.

“I didn’t kiss him. I promise. Stacey misunderstood what she saw.”

“Okay,” Chandler squeezed him tight and then stepped back. “I’m sorry I went nutso on you. You just scare me because you’re all grown up and sexy and he’d be crazy not to want to tap that, so can you please just _not_ kiss him ever, even if he wants to? For my sake? Bros before—”

“Don’t you dare finish that. Time for you to go now, I can sense Blaine looming nearby and you don’t want him discovering you charged into his territory to pick a fight with his... me.” He really was going to have to figure out what the hell he and Blaine were to each other. Boyfriend sounded too juvenile and Kurt had had about as much of that as he could take for the day.

“Shit.” Chandler scrambled for the door. He turned back at the last moment and pleaded, “Don’t tell him okay? My mom really would go ape if he killed me.”

“ _Go_ Chandler.” Accepting he wasn’t going to get any better than that the teen opened the door, and then practically peed his pants when he saw Blaine standing on the other side.

“H-hi Blaine, Kurt and I were just catching up.” He stammered and Blaine rolled his eyes and stepped passed him into the room.

“Go Chandler.” Chandler didn’t need telling any more than twice. Kurt shook his head at the boys fleeing back and turned to see about procuring himself something strong to drink (there should be alcohol somewhere in a room this fancy) but he was taken off guard when Blaine was suddenly behind him, pining his hands by his waist.

Kurt really didn’t want to find Blaine’s body heat so distracting, and he definitely shouldn’t feel anything but alarm at the simmering anger he felt radiating off of him, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t. What he felt was his pulse leap and his skin tingle where Blaine’s nose brushed the back of his neck. Still, he wasn’t going to encourage Blaine to get into some sort of alpha snit every time someone so much as poked him. Considering he was going to be entering a battle ring with someone a whole lot more dangerous than Chandler soon, Blaine really had to get a handle on his protective instincts.

“Blaine, is there a reason you’ve got my arms trapped and you’re sniffing me like a bloodhound?”

“Yes, Kurt,” Blaine growled and _that_ really shouldn’t have the power to make his knees weak but surprise, it totally did. “Is there a reason you were close enough to Adam Crawford for Stacey to ‘misunderstand’ what she saw?”

He almost elbowed Blaine in the stomach, he was that done with this whole ‘let’s all act like we’re thirteen’ thing but then again Blaine’s body was really hot against his and they were supposed to be practicing so they could have sex in two weeks and Kurt always had been an overachiever.

So when he hemmed and hawed like he had to think about it he knew exactly what he was doing.

“Pretty sure he was coming on to me actually. I think he wanted me to consider my options.” He gasped when Blaine placed a chastising bite to the back of his neck and didn’t kneed the bond to feel his smugness, could feel Blaine’s smug little smirk pressing into his skin.

“Did you?” Blaine asked before placing a lingering kiss where his teeth had been moments before. Now Kurt didn’t know much about vibes but whatever ones Blaine was sending off the dick twitching in his pants was definitely digging them.

“Yeah. I-ah,” he hissed as one of the hands pinning his arms to his side lifted and Blaine’s hand sank in his hair and tugged his head back until his throat was arched pretty and bare. He swallowed because he could _feel_ Blaine looking at it, and he wanted everything about this and he couldn’t even explain to himself why. “I did.”

“And?” Blaine’s lips mouthed at his neck and Kurt shivered.

“And then I asked him to show me how to follow my heart.”

“And?” Blaine prompted again, nibbling over his pulse and Kurt would have fallen if Blaine weren’t there to lean against.

“It led me to you,” he panted and Blaine smiled before he bit, too light to do anything but sting, but pleasure jolted the breath out of his body and Kurt realized only after the roaring left his ears that the high embarrassing whine he heard was coming from him. If Blaine didn’t touch him in the next four seconds he was going to combust.

“Good,” was all Blaine said as he moved his lips to Kurt’s ear, teasing the lobe before he whispered, “You’ll remember that won’t you Kurt? I really can’t have you running around giving other alphas the wrong ideas.”

Kurt didn’t think he’d ever forget what that had felt like, but he really wanted to find out what Blaine would do if he thought he might.

“I don’t know,” he pretended to think on it. “You heard Chandler, they’d be crazy not to want to tap this. Sounds like Adam might have had the right idea.”

“Knees.” It should really scare him that a word not shouted should have him hitting the floor so fast he jolted his teeth, but there was such dominance in it Blaine might as well have pushed him there.

Blaine hadn’t used that voice on him since the full moon and his memories of it were hazy at best. He was fully aware now. Blaine was dominating him because he was a dominant and Kurt was letting him because he _wanted_ Blaine’s dominance so badly right now his knees were smarting with it. It was actually a bit terrifying, but even with Blaine looming over him he wasn’t frightened. He was exhilarated and possibly harder than he’d ever been in his life, because Blaine made him feel like he was going to fly apart and the getting there might turn out to be what he’d been looking for his whole life. He didn’t feel anything but desperate want when Blaine kneeled to kiss him, like kissing Kurt was the last thing he’d ever live to do. Blaine pulled away with a rough pant of frustration.

“You are unfair, just unreal Kurt.” Kurt actually thought he was going to glow like a lantern with pride. “I need to touch you right now, because I’m pretty sure it will kill me if I don’t, but I need a word. Something you’ll say when you want me to stop. It’s gotta be something you wouldn’t normally say in the middle of sex.”

“Stop?”

“Kurt!” Blaine tugged on his hair and Kurt grinned.

“Versace?” He offered up a more serious suggestion and Blaine nodded in agreement, mouthing the word like he was testing it out.

“Okay,” he said after a moment, stroking Kurt’s cheek. “Do you want to practice now?”

“I thought we were.” Honestly what were they doing if this wasn’t—but then Blaine was kissing him senseless again and Kurt went a bit, well, senseless.


	17. 16.5: A Prelude To Intimacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt and Blaine practice and Kurt sees some writing on the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am happy to report that as of today I have found a lovely new place with some interesting new roommates who I am excited to get to know. And obviously I have an internet connection again so YAY for good things. I have to move all my stuff in so it might be a bit still until chapter 17 but in celebration I'm posting this mini chapter as it doesn't actually flow as well with the rest of what I have planned. I only pushed it to 17 because of LJ's character limit anyway. So enjoy chapter 16.5.

Blaine ordered him to strip off his shirt and Kurt complied, eager to continue, but Blaine only stood and stared at him for what seemed like forever. It was nerve wrecking to have his lips still buzzing with the pressure of a kiss and Blaine standing over him like that unmoving. Kurt shivered. His anticipation for the next touch was almost tangible, a hand steeling inside to wind him up like his nerves were made of bow string. His skin had pebbled in goose bumps but he knew that it had nothing to do with a chill and everything to do with the intensity of Blaine’s stare and each straining second that passed with the absence of touch.

What was Blaine waiting for? Was he supposed to do something? A million questions crowded inside of his head but Kurt didn’t voice any of them. He felt somehow that he should wait-that Blaine wanted him to wait- but that didn’t make staying still and silent easy. The longer the silence stretched the more uncertain he became. Just when Kurt couldn’t take it any longer and opened his mouth to beg Blaine to do or say something, Blaine smiled and crouched down to plant a kiss on his brow.

“You’re doing great,” he assured and Kurt couldn’t resist the impulse to nuzzle their cheeks or let his head fall into the crook between Blaine’s neck and shoulder where his pulse beat strongest and his scent seemed thickest because he _was_ impatient. He licked over the sensitive skin, savoring the salt and sweat, whining low at the ache inside blooming hotter and hotter. He wanted to bite Blaine there but the instinct unnerved him, the strange desire he had to have brine, blood, and bone between his teeth startling in its intensity. Kurt didn’t want to feel that way, didn’t want the strange hunger that was overtaking him but with Blaine so close and remaining out of reach it only seemed to get harder and harder to focus on anything else.

“Do you know that your eyes change when you let the wolf take you?” Blaine asked as he guided Kurt’s gaze to the mirror on the opposite wall. Like someone observing from behind glass Kurt saw pupils blown so wide they almost swallowed the color of his irises and that his eyes had turned that eerie electric blue he usually only sported in his wolf body. If it was strange to want to eat Blaine it was only stranger still to gaze in a mirror and see not himself but the wolf gazing back at him. He’d have been terrified of it last month. He might even have been terrified of it five minutes ago; but he didn’t-couldn’t- feel any terror now. What he felt was Blaine’s body surrounding his, hot and hard wherever they touched, Blaine’s fingers grasping his chin, and Blaine’s lips tickling his ear as he whispered, “that’s why none of those other guys could satisfy you, why you’ll never truly be satisfied by another human again.”

Kurt could feel it all again, as if he was reliving it, the hunger, the need, the contempt he felt for each of the lovers he’d discarded, and he snarled. Blaine stroked the side of his neck, the gesture both possessive and soothing.

“It’s because with them you can’t let the wolf go. They’d get hurt. You need a mate strong enough to dominate you.” Blaine leaned forward and nibbled on his earlobe. His teeth caught and tugged and something about the action was seductive despite the sting of it. A shudder rolled down Kurt’s spine and Blaine chuckled darkly as he finished with, “They’re only _worthy_ if they’re strong enough.”

Blaine guided Kurt’s focus back to him and Kurt followed the pressure of his fingers willingly though his body was so taught with tension it began a fine tremble. Their eyes locked together and Kurt stilled and stared unblinking. He knew that he was trapped in the gaze of a predator. Gone were the greens and browns that made up the familiar hazel that Kurt expected to see looking back at him, replaced instead by amber so bright and heated he wouldn’t have been surprised to suddenly catch fire. It was no longer _just_ Blaine looking back at him, the same way Kurt was no longer simply Kurt but something greater. It wasn’t fear Kurt felt pinned by that animal gaze, it was welcome. He had been searching for this, for _him_ this beautiful and striking alpha whose eyes could burn through him like he was prey.

And still there was a thread of uncertainty in Blaine’s voice that spoke to the man inside when he said, “You will have to trust that while you are lost to yourself that I will care for you and use my power over you only to give you what you need. That word you gave me is your protection. If I hurt you in a way that hurts your soul…” Blaine laid a hand above Kurt’s heart and it began a thunderous beat beneath his palm. “Your word will inflict itself upon me, pain for pain, until I stop. I will carry the scars to remind myself of my failure. I offer you this word for your safety, for my guide in your safekeeping, and for the love I bear you. Do you accept it?”

He knew that he was accepting more than just a safe word, that saying yes to Blaine was accepting surrender to the heart thundering away in his chest, accepting surrender to the force behind Blaine’s eyes that demanded his willing subjugation. He understood now why Adam had warned him there would be no coming back from this. He could feel it even now, the way his mind seemed to want to sink under and let the beast take over, to let go and trust that the wolf knew where it was he so desperately wanted to go, to rely on Blaine to lead them there. There was fear to be sure, quick sharp and brilliant. But greater still there was trust in Blaine, trust so deep it seemed endless; he trusted Blaine with everything in him that he had to give. So for Kurt there was only one thing to say.

“I do.” Almost as quickly as the words passed his lips a cold chill swept over him and the area where Blaine had his palm pressed burned hot. When Blaine raised his hand Kurt caught the briefest glimpse of the letters V- E- R- S- A- C- E- glowing on his open palm before the word faded as if it had never been. And then Kurt was falling under.

-*-*-

Blaine held him quietly, stroking his face softly as he watched Kurt with bright amber eyes. There was such power behind those eyes, like the heart behind them was something more than muscle. Blaine was ferocity incarnate and the human shape he sported was a bridle. Kurt cursed his flesh and bone, the cage of his soft body, for he wanted nothing more than to pull Blaine out of it. He wanted Blaine unbridled, intemperate and uninhibited—every color of uncontrolled. He was made to bring this alpha low, in order to elevate him to a greatness he couldn’t achieve alone. The curse of the conqueror: anything once conquered was no longer worthy of conquest. But Kurt was different. He could neither be tamed or broken and what lived inside of him was savage. A lesser alpha would have been wary, and wisely so, but Blaine was tempted, Kurt could see it.

When Blaine’s hungry gaze drifted to his neck Kurt knew what he would do even before Blaine lunged for it. Kurt ducked his head and brought his shoulder up, knocking their heads together lightly. He playfully rubbed their skulls together to lessen the sting and Blaine grinned at him.

“Tease,” he murmured and Kurt returned his grin with a challenging glint in his eyes. Reaching this time with his fingers Blaine grazed the side of Kurt’s neck. Almost too fast for the eye to catch he reached with the other hand and gripped the back of Kurt’s skull by the hair. The pressure ripped a soft gasp from him and Blaine quickly covered his lips and slipped his tongue between Kurt’s parted lips. Blaine invaded his senses: overwhelming him with sight, scent, and touch as his tongue all but plundered Kurt’s mouth demanding surrender. He thrust in and out in what Kurt desperately hoped was promise.

Blaine’s kiss left his brain foggy, so much so that he almost didn’t even realize they’d stopped until he heard Blaine’s quiet order to sit up straight and hold his hands behind his back. He complied without thought, with a mindless obedience that bordered on thralldom, and Blaine crooned that he was very good, petting Kurt like an obedient dog. A knowing grin spread on the alpha’s face when realization finally dawned on him and frustration flared hot within Kurt. He didn’t _want_ to be immobile. He wanted to touch and to be touched. He wanted Blaine. He wanted to take. Not wait to be given. He wasn’t that easy. _Not that weak_.

Blaine seemed ready for it when Kurt tackled him to the floor. Ignoring the sting in his scalp from Blaine’s grip on his hair, Kurt threw his weight down and grappled with Blaine’s twisting limbs to pin the shorter male. Blaine growled when Kurt managed to straddle him, smacking the alpha’s tense arms back against the floor with a satisfying thwack. He grinned down triumphantly at Blaine, leaning down to claim his lips in a bruising kiss. He bit at the plump folds when they resisted his plying tongue, a growl rumbling in his chest as he tightened his grip on Blaine’s arms, nails biting into flesh, as he sucked greedily on lips that steadfastly barred him entry. He wanted Blaine’s taste, wanted it so badly he squeezed his eyes shut with frustration and whined for it. And then, like a mercy, Blaine finally opened to him and he groaned low in the back of his throat as his tongue sank into beautiful sensuous warmth. 

He was quickly lost to it, releasing Blaine’s arms to grip his face and hold him desperately close. Kurt could have kissed him like that forever, so he couldn’t figure out whether it was to his delight or his fury that Blaine twisted them sideways and over; Kurt had to slam his palms down on the hardwood and strain with all his might not to end up flat on his stomach. His nails were boring into the wood, his vision going spotty as something not quite rage boiled up within him. It was just as hot, just as ferocious, as that familiar emotion and yet it wasn’t quite, because far from snarling Kurt was grinning through his gasps for breath. The weight of Blaine’s body weighed him down and he could hear it in Blaine’s voice, though it was low and forceful, that he was as exhilarated by it as Kurt was.

“Face. Floor. Now.” The command was unmistakably stronger this time and Kurt’s arms turned to jelly and he hit the floor with a grunt and a strange feeling of relief. There was something reassuring about the feeling of Blaine on top of him, surrounding him, something welcome even in the punishing sting of his teeth as he bit just behind Kurt’s ear, pulling a startled yelp from him.

“You really don’t like to do what you’re told,” Blaine murmured, replacing his teeth with a soothing lick of his tongue. And when he said, “You didn’t stay sleeping when I commanded it either,” Kurt couldn’t help but smile with pride.

Kurt hissed when Blaine wrapped his wrist in a punishing grip, the scratch of his nails only a further reminder of how vulnerable he was in his current position. The pain was welcome, the pain let him know that Blaine held control by might, and his alpha’s might was deeply pleasing. He needed to know the depth of it, how far he could go. Why wouldn’t he let go? Was there a limit to Blaine’s strength?

The thought was contemptuous and it made him unaccountably angry for reasons he had no desire to examine in his current state of mind. Instead he tossed his head and he would have smacked Blaine in the face with the back of his skull if the other man hadn’t had the presence of mind to dodge at that very moment. Kurt growled, trying to buck Blaine’s weight off of his back but Blaine’s thighs caged his lower body iron tight. He shushed Kurt like a mother at a wailing infant, pressing frustratingly brief kisses down his neck and across his shoulders.

“You know, anyone else would think you’re insubordinate,” he murmured between kisses. “But actually you’re beautifully responsive. God smell you,” Blaine dragged in a nose full of air, nuzzling the sensitive skin just between his shoulder blades and Kurt shivered. “You want it. You’re just testing your limits. Testing me. Up.” The command came in stride but it was still strong enough to wrap around him and pull his strings like a puppet. As soon as Blaine’s weight eased off of him Kurt pushed himself up on shaking arms and shifted until he was sitting with his back to the alpha. Blaine told him to open his legs and he spread them as Blaine wrapped warm arms around his waist and stroked the flat surface of his stomach. Blaine’s hands on his skin was just right and not enough all at once. Too drained to fight it Kurt let himself fall back until his head rested on the shorter man’s shoulder, melting into his embrace like he was boneless. Blaine turned to kiss him slow and deliberate, and Kurt ignored the awkward way he had to stretch his neck to meet him, knowing that at the moment he could do nothing more than comply with the silent demand.

This time when they parted Kurt sat still, watching him with quiet acquiescence. Blaine’s smile for him was warm and slow.

“It’s kind of amazing to me that you’re _harder_ to control now that you’ve grown into yourself. I think you were always meant to be more than human Kurt. You were made for me. I know that even if you don’t yet.” Kurt’s heart skipped a beat and he smiled, meeting Blaine’s eyes and asking silently for permission. Blaine nodded and his eye lashes lowered as Kurt arched and twisted until their lips met again in the softest of kisses. The wolf didn’t care much for words, but there was something within him that glowed bright and warm like a flame at the things his alpha was saying. It was strange, soft, but it loved his alpha as he did so he accepted it. Blaine hummed, something like a purr, against his lips and Kurt grinned as he fell back, resting again cradled in Blaine’s arms. His alpha’s hands continued slow languid strokes up and down his torso, venturing tantalizingly low only to retreat before they could fulfill Kurt’s hopeful expectation for a touch where he wanted it most. But Blaine’s hands did not venture any lower. Instead they pulled up as he wrapped his arms around Kurt’s middle and hugged him tightly, breathing a shuddery sigh.

The wolf wanted to whine in distress. His alpha sounded pained and he wanted to turn and cover him in kisses and licks, cover him with his body and protect him with his teeth and his claws from whatever was causing him pain but there was no threat that he could see or smell. There was just the two of them, just Blaine’s fierce embrace and Kurt’s pounding heart. And then Blaine’s mouth was against his neck, teeth scraping threateningly over sensitive skin.

“I don’t want to fail you, but this is... Kurt I can’t be like this with you on the full moon. You won’t settle for the man. You won’t settle till I’m as wild as you are and you have no idea how much I want to take you. I should have taken you ages ago. You’re _mine_.” Kurt jerked when Blaine’s teeth struck him, too high, but the sensation it caused was enough to have him arching off the floor. He was suddenly flushed with heat, over taken by such a terrible yearning he couldn’t even remember to breathe. His breathing was shattered, little more than broken up whining. He did not like this feeling, this feeling of being held at an edge. His chest felt hollowed out, caved in and Blaine who was everything he knew he needed to fill him had only to join them. He wanted Blaine inside ever layer of him, mind and heart, down to the flow of his blood. He was his alpha’s and his alpha was his but the alpha would not claim him. Why didn’t the alpha want him? He had to. He did. Kurt was his _mate_.

Kurt reach up to pull Blaine’s mouth closer, panting with labored breaths as he shook with the tension of anticipation. He arched even further, offering everything he had and wanting the alpha to take it. Blaine moaned against the taught skin of his throat and attacked the expanse with heavy kisses, sucking bruises into the pale flesh; but he didn’t bite, didn’t claim and when he tore himself away with a snarl Kurt all but whimpered in desperation. And then Blaine was yanking his head back by the hair and panting over his pulse point.

“Enough. You’re mine. You’ll adjust if—” Blaine cut off with a violent jerk and a hiss of pain and for Kurt it was like being suddenly shoved into an unheated pool. For a split second every sense he had was muffled and his guts twisted viciously as if he was going to be motion sick, which was disconcerting to say the least because he wasn’t even moving.

And then slowly sound and scent came back and the room blurred into focus. He was Kurt again, that other thing he’d been receded, and Blaine’s arms were no longer around him. Kurt found he’d fallen backward on his elbows and was gripping his right arm in hand and staring at his open palm in horror. Bleeding red and angry, as if someone had taken a knife and carved them into the soft flesh, were the letters V-E-R-S-A-C-E.

“Blaine!” Kurt gaped at him in shock, twisting to grasp his arm and pull his hand in for close inspection. The sight of Blaine hurt and bleeding was doing something to his insides. He _never_ wanted to see him hurt, and he wanted even less to be the cause of it. Blaine had told him this would happen if he ever hurt Kurt, but he hadn’t been hurt. He’d wanted everything Blaine had done, frighteningly so. He’d wanted more. He knew without a doubt it would have made him happier if Blaine would have fucked the living daylights out of him and attempted to swallow him whole.

“I’m so sorry.” He apologized profusely, scrambling for his abandoned shirt to press against the wound. “You didn’t hurt me. I wanted…that, all of that. You. I wanted you to—it shouldn’t have hurt you. Why did it hurt you?” It shouldn’t have. Nothing should ever hurt Blaine, least of all Kurt.

“No, Kurt it’s fine. Are you kidding? Don’t apologize to me. _I’m_ sorry.” Blaine halted his frantic movements with his left hand and lifted the right up for Kurt’s careful inspection. To Kurt’s shock the flesh was smooth, as if the letters of his safe word had never rendered them. There wasn’t even a scar to remember it by. If not for the blood smeared on his palm Kurt wouldn’t have believed he’d ever been cut at all.

Disoriented, still nocuous, and now sick with guilt Kurt blinked back tears as he clutched Blaine’s palm, pressing his mouth to the center of his palm as if kisses had the magic to heal like fairytales always assured.

“It shouldn’t have hurt you,” he mumbled against the skin.

“It hurt me because I was going to hurt you. You weren’t willing Kurt, not really,” Blaine explained, voice laden with shame. Kurt could feel how close he was to tears and he hated it.

“Blaine-”

“No Kurt it was a warning. And I’m glad I had it. Kurt, I don’t want to hurt you.” _Not Ever_ resonated so loudly between them it didn’t matter that the words were thought and not said.

“I don’t want to hurt you either.”

He was so afraid he was going to. He couldn’t let the wolf have control and keep human priorities, neither of them could, but he just wasn’t _ready_ to take the final step and it was horrifying how close to the fire he was willingly getting. He wanted Blaine but he wanted to keep _himself_ as well and he didn’t know how to do that without either of them getting hurt. He didn’t know he was crying until he tasted the salt of a tear sliding into the corner of his lips. “I never should have asked you to do this. It was selfish and s-stupid and—”

“Hey, no. Kurt all you did was ask. I’m the one who said yes. I want to do this with you. I don’t want you locked up and miserable on the full moon. Do you think that would be any easier for me? I’d spend the whole night clawing at your door. It’d be torture for both of us.”

“I asked while grinding on you. You weren’t exactly thinking with the head above your collar.” Blaine let out a startled chuckle and Kurt sniffed back more of the tears that wanted to spill. As Blaine wiped his cheeks Kurt asked quietly, “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to keep practicing and I’m going to learn from this warning and any others that come up before the full moon. On that night we’ll probably run till we drop in a field somewhere and then get naked and two legged and have crazy jungle sex.” Kurt laughed despite himself, Blaine’s gentle teasing doing much to appease his worries. His hands were so gentle as the cupped Kurt’s chin. “I’ll honor your limits and my promises to you, Kurt. I will. I don’t want you worrying about that. You just focus on learning all you can so you can wipe the dirt with Flint.”

“Will the crazy jungle sex be off the table if I lose?” Kurt asked, relenting to letting his worries go.

“Well you’ll be sore so we might have to hold some of the crazy,” Blaine replied and Kurt smiled. The smile was private and tinged with sadness. Whether Blaine wanted to face it or not, Kurt knew that he was running out of time. He’d been stupid, short sighted, and too easily swayed by his lust. He’d had every warning in the world and he’d ignored them all for the chance to be closer to Blaine. Now they were too close. Now there was no going back. Now there was no getting out without blood.

The full moon was it. He had two weeks to be ready or… well Kurt didn’t want to think about the alternative.

He leaned forward and kissed Blaine soft and sure, for the simple pleasure of it; because kissing Blaine was simply what he should do. 

_‘I love you.’_ Was what he thought.

“The road to hell is pathed with good intentions.” Was what he said.


	18. Contradictions

Burt had been parked outside of Tina’s residence since that afternoon. It was long after dark now and the street which had been quiet all day was all but dead now. He’d watched her neighbors come and go during the day, dashing quickly from doorways to cars, nobody lingering to chat in their driveways, no children playing outside. The whole city was subdued but Burt couldn’t help but think something else was going on here. In other parts of the city people were doing their best to carry on, taking chances by stepping outside to water their gardens and walk their dogs. Tina’s block seemed to be holding its breath.

His phone vibrated in his lap and Burt let it go, glancing down only briefly to confirm that Carol was indeed calling him. She wanted him to come home. She thought he was crazy hanging out in his truck at night with a subhuman serial killer on the loose, and Burt had to admit it looked that way. But the thing was, loving someone made you do crazy things. He thought of the gun (his dad’s) that he had stored in the glove compartment and tightened his hand on the wheel. Being a parent meant he loved Kurt with just about every breath he had, meant that if he had to he’d fire a gun he hadn’t touched since he was a boy in hunting green out with his dad and his uncle. Kurt was out there in the world somewhere, maybe alone, maybe hurting, maybe being cut open and experimented on, definitely being hunted. Fact was, he’d risk his life for Kurt any day any time, and now was that time.

At that moment his phone vibrated again and he glanced down and frowned at the unrecognized number. It could be Carol calling from a different number in the hopes that he’d pick up, but then again it could be Kurt and Burt couldn’t take the chance that it wasn’t. “Hello?” He answered, unable to hold back his desperate hope, but he was only met by the sound of heavy breathing in his ear.

“Burt?” The voice on the other end of the line sounded like Tina’s but he couldn’t be sure. It was muffled, thin and tiny, as if it was coming from far away and out of a tube. Oh god what if she had left town too? What if she disappeared like Kurt had? How would he find his son then? He couldn’t let that happen.

“Tina? Tina where’s Kurt?!” He demanded and when there was no answer he rushed on. “I don’t care what happened I just need to know where my son is.” He heard the click of the call ending before he even finished speaking and when she didn’t respond to her name shouted down the line he slammed his hand down against the dashboard in aggravation. Shit. He should have planned this better. He should have hired someone who knew how to trace phone calls, or maybe a PI who could track her down better than he could driving around being virtually useless. What was he going to do now?

Someone tapped on the window and Burt jumped in his seat with a yell, hand automatically reaching for the glove compartment. When his heart had come out of his throat he examined the man standing outside his window. One look at the guy was all he needed to start getting a grip on the gun as stealthily as he could. The guy was tall and broad shouldered, wearing a dark coat that Burt thought Kurt might have liked, and sporting a sleek pair of sunglasses. That was odd for the middle of the night but it wasn’t that, or the fact that this guy was strolling around in the dark by himself even, that had Burt’s hand tightening on the gun in his lap. He couldn’t explain it but something about this guy absolutely gave him the creeps.

Mr. I wear sunglasses in the dark tapped again and gestured for Burt to lower the window but he didn’t think so.

“Yeah?” He called through the glass, arching a brow and Sunglasses smiled at him as if something about Burt was highly amusing.

“You looking for Tina?” The guy asked and Burt’s heart leapt again. Now it was possible this guy was just a helpful neighbor but he doubted it. His instincts were screaming danger and Burt always trusted his instincts. That and Tina was dating a vampire last Burt heard and right now he didn’t care if it was politically correct or not, he was likely to shoot the first vampire he encountered and ask questions later.

“Who wants to know?” He asked and the guy grinned at him gleefully. That gleeful little smile sent shivers up and down Burt’s spine and the hand holding the gun began to shake because he knew, he just _knew_ this guy was bad news. Probably the worst news he’d ever gotten. The stranger cocked his head to the side in snake like motion and brought something small and black out of his coat. A phone, Burt realized.

“Burt,” the stranger cried in a thin whispery imitation of Tina’s voice and that ghastly grin widened at the look of horror on Burt’s face. “Should I take a bow?”

Burt didn’t answer. He just checked his grip on the gun, made sure he was ready to fire and waited. He didn’t have to ask if this guy was the vampire hunting Kurt. He knew and he also knew he would only get one shot at this. He suddenly wished he’d picked up the phone when Carol had called, even if it meant a fight. He’d have liked to hear her voice again. He tried to remember the things he’d been taught in Safe-Ed, all that stuff about garlic and crosses, all the supposed ways to ward off vampires. That was useless to him now. What he knew was not to look it in the eye and that a bullet aimed in the right spot could put it down for a minute or two. That was all Burt needed.

He raised the gun the same instant the vampire smashed a fist through the glass and he fired without hesitation. Somebody in one of the houses nearby shrieked and the sound was quickly cut off. The vampire howled in pain and the force of the bullets knocked him backwards but he didn’t fall. Burt threw his entire weight against the door in the hope that the heavy metal would finish the job. The vampire fell to the ground and Burt dived back into the driver’s seat. He had to get the truck moving his frantic mind thought as he twisted the key in the ignition but there wasn’t time. The bullets had barely slowed the vampire down and somehow it was already on its feet and wrenching the door of the truck off with a furious snarl like it was made of Swiss cheese. Burt emptied what was left of the round and watched the vampire stagger back and fall to its knees. He didn’t wait to find out how long it would take for it to get up. He threw the truck into gear and slammed his foot down on the gas.

He narrowly avoided rear ending a car parked a couple of feet or so ahead of him and tore off down the street. He had to fight for breath through his terrified gasps, his vision going spotted from lack of oxygen. His heart was thundering in his chest fit to burst and he didn’t exactly have the best track record with that. As the truck sped down the empty street and Burt fought the dizziness in his head and the burning in his chest with the knowledge that he couldn’t let that thing catch him because then Kurt would truly be alone in the world and he’d promised him he’d never be alone. Only within the blink of an eye the street was no longer empty and someone was standing in the middle of it. Burt didn’t have time to think. He slammed his foot on the brakes and turned the wheel on instinct, desperate not to hit the person who had appeared so suddenly within his headlights. The vehicle fish tailed with a screech of tires and came to a sudden jarring stop as it collided with something solid. Burt was thrown out the open doorway and he hit the ground with a heavy thud and rolled. He stopped on his stomach and just laid there, pain splintering through every limb. He wasn’t sure he hadn’t cracked a rib, the way his chest suddenly felt compressed and hot but he wasn’t thinking about the pain, just Kurt and how he had to get up, couldn’t let that thing get him; but it was too hard to move even though he tried till he was screaming with the effort.

Tears burned in his eyes and the futility of trying to crawl away tore a sob out of his throat but he reached again, grasping handfuls of grass and dirt and pulling with all of the strength left in him. He had to get up. Had to get Kurt. He’d crawl the whole way if his legs were broken. Can’t stop. Can’t let—his thoughts seemed to stutter as a dark pair of boots appeared in his vision and the vampire that wore them blocked his path. The vampire knelt as Burt attempted to raise himself up, revealing a torso drenched in blood and rapidly healing bullet wounds. The vampires hand shot out to grip his chin in a crushing grip and Burt cried out, the sound dying off in a terrified whimper as the vampire raised a finger to his lips and shushed him.

“Shhh now. The curtain falls for everyone, but not everybody dies for a reason. You’re the father. You get to die with purpose, glorious purpose, Burt.”

“I d-don’t want to d-die,” Burt forced out somehow through the tightness in his throat and the pressure on his jaw.

“Oh have a little vision!” The vampire exclaimed, seemingly so affronted by Burt’s lack of it that he all but shook with rage. Gentling he crooned, “Your death will send men to war and topple thrones. Do you know how many men would kill for your part? Don’t spoil it now with tears. All of you die Burt, that’s the truth about humans. Only a few of you die who mean anything. And you…” The vampire trailed a long sharp nail across Burt’s throat, a thin line of red appearing with the movement. “You mean the world to someone. Don’t you?”

“Please,” Burt pleaded, not because he believed this Vampire would show him mercy, but because in that moment he was utterly helpless; he was tiny and there were things in the world that were infinite and if God was one of them then all he could say was please and hope he was heard.

“No.” The Vampire answered softly, his cheerful smile sinister and twisted and Burt closed his eyes in anticipation for the end.

What happened next Burt didn’t quite know. One minute he was preparing to die, the next he was being dropped to the ground and his ears were filled with animalistic snarls and enraged cries. When he managed to open his eyes and raise his head up far enough to see what he saw was enough to make him want to curl up and close his eyes. He thought they were a pair of dogs at first glance but they were too large for that. Werewolves were tearing at the vampire who was as taken back by their sudden appearance as Burt was. They were both brown but one was smaller and slighter and-if the obvious lack of a set of balls when the vampire sent her rolling belly up was any indication-female.

The vampire was strong and fast, too fast for Burt’s eyes to keep up with, and he actually winced in sympathy when the vampire got a grip on the male and flung him against the side of the truck. The male let out an agonized yelp and the female whined, scrambling back to her feet. With a hair raising growl she leapt onto the vampire’s back, snarling and tearing at him like a thing possessed and Burt closed his eyes when the vampire started screaming and he felt blood splash his face. He opened them again when he heard the female yelp high and pained and saw her lying in the street not far from where the male had been not long ago. The male was no longer crumpled beside the vehicle but looming over Burt, placing the seemingly giant expanse of its body between Burt and the vampire whose eyes Burt could see now that they were no longer covered by sunglasses. They were white and bloodless, as if he didn’t have any veins to pinken them. His irises were a thin bright blue that would have been beautiful for all that they were eerily bright, if not for the violent and alarming red of his pupils.

The blood red of his eyes only seemed more horrific on his blooded face and the way his lips twisted up in an ugly snarl sent a shudder through Burt. The vampire took a step toward them but then the female wolf was there as well, crouched with her mate and ready to strike. There were sirens wailing in the distance, drawing closer Burt noted with hope he almost didn’t dare to believe in but then the vampire hissed and took a step back straightening his spine and rolling his neck in a reptilian movement to get the kinks out. And then that sickening gaze was pinned directly on him and the vampire was staring into his soul, burning him from inside out, and grinning at the way he trembled.

“You shouldn’t play hard to get darling. It only makes me angry.”

“Yeah well…” it was still hard for Burt to speak, he couldn’t quite get past the not being dead part. But it gave him great satisfaction to get the words out just the same. “Fuck you.”

The vampire seemed more amused than angered but Burt couldn’t be bothered to care because the guy turned and melted into the darkness like a shadow. Burt waited for as long as he could bear to hold himself up and then collapsed to the ground, desperately glad to be alive and pretty sure his heart was about to blow up.

He heard something strange and disturbingly wet sounding going on around him but he was too spent to open his eyes, crying softly instead as he panted for breath.

“Burt! Are you alright?” A strangely familiar male voice yelled into his ear at about the same moment a woman screeched, “Noah when I tell you to stand down that means stand down, not go charging crazed vampires!”

“Puckerman?” Burt groaned, opening gummy eyes blearily to find that yes indeed one of his old garage hands was leaning over him, naked as the day he was born. Next to him was a young woman who was also startlingly naked, the sweat on her breasts catching lamplight and gleaming. Burt blinked, pretty sure he’d lost his mind and begun to hallucinate, but he averted his eyes just in case. 

“That leech was seconds from taking a bite out of him Berry, there wasn’t time to wait for back up,” Puck snapped at the woman beside him and she huffed an angry breath and crossed her arms over her chest and shot back, “I find it highly suspicious that after multiple disappearances you decided it was time to be earnest in your duties and take a patrol, and that said patrol would be so highly unorthodox it would conveniently place you in every location one human just happened to be. You’re taking orders from Anderson! Honestly Puck what am I going to tell Sh-“

“Tell her whatever you want Rachel. I did what I had to do and this guy is busted up pretty bad. Are you gonna help me or not?” Puck turning back to Burt as the female huffed again and ran his large hands over Burt’s chest anxiously. He thought he heard the woman-Rachel- mutter something about insubordinate subs. Then Puck was leaning close and asking, “How’re you feeling Burt? Are you bleeding anywhere?”

Now that the adrenaline was no longer crashing through him his mind seemed sluggish, his body suddenly keen to remind him of all its aches and pains. Chief of which was the burning in his chest. It took him a moment but he got there.

“No…” he coughed, his throat burning with the effort of speech. “You’re… you’re a werewolf?” Jesus he’d had one of those things working with him for nearly a year, eating at his table, hanging out with his step-son. How much danger had they all been in?

“Yeah,” Puck actually seemed sheepish as he cleared his throat. “Sorry I never told you guys, but some people take it badly.”

“Don’t apologize for keeping yourself safe Noah,” the woman beside him sniffed, casting a disdainful eye on Burt, as if she’d read his thoughts. “You don’t owe anybody an apology for being what you are. Does he Mr. Hummel?” There was something about the bark of her voice that made Burt hurry to answer.

“I-it’s fine.” It wasn’t. Nothing was fine but Puck had always been a good kid and tonight he’d saved Burt’s life so it was as close to fine as it was capable of getting at the moment. “Listen… I need… I need a doctor.” That was the last thing Burt said, or at least he thought he managed to say it. Then everything went black.

-*-*-

Kurt was woken from sleep very early in the morning not by the knock on the door that came from Wes but by the sudden sense that he was needed. He woke to a chill going down his spine. He reached for Blaine, to the instinct to protect strong as an unknowable danger wreaked havoc with his senses. Another chill swept over him when he realized that Blaine was no longer beside him in bed. He sat up, his heart beginning to race but stilled when he discovered that Blaine was standing at the bedroom door unharmed talking quietly to Wes. He hadn’t bothered to turn on a light, perhaps so he wouldn’t wake Kurt, and the two men kept their voices so low Kurt could barely pick out what they were saying. But he could still feel Blaine, still read his pain and his anger and that was how Kurt realized that it was Blaine’s turbulent emotions that had dragged him from the depths of sleep.

“Blaine?” He questioned tentatively, not wanting to interrupt whatever he and Wes were talking about, and it had to be something serious if it would bring Wes to interrupt his Alpha’s sleep, but more important to Kurt was Blaine’s reaction to it. He’d never felt Blaine so torn before. Even in the dark Kurt could see their faces when they turned to look at him, could see the gravitas in their expressions and the compelling look Wes shot in Blaine’s direction and the short shake of his head that Blaine returned.

“Send out word to the others. I want to leave by sun up.” Kurt heard him instruct to Wes before he shut the door on the Beta’s retreating back and turned to Kurt to say, “Everything’s fine. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“Well I only woke up because clearly everything isn’t fine. I can feel it pouring off of you,” Kurt insisted and he could tell by the exasperated huff he let out that Blaine was cursing the depth of their bond. And when he said, “I was afraid of that,” Kurt couldn’t help his slight smile, especially once Blaine returned it. Kurt patted the empty space beside him, still warm where Blaine had laid before, but Blaine ignored the invitation striding over to the window instead and leaning against the sill as he stared out it for a long drawn out moment. Kurt didn’t interrupt his solitude, he could practically see the thoughts he was sorting through in his head. He was gathering his courage to say something he clearly didn’t know how to say. 

“Kurt I’ve ordered Wes to put together an expedition…” The words settled in the space between them not meaning much to Kurt but he waited and sure enough Blaine picked up on his confusion and he explained. “It’s basically a big hunting trip. On rotation we organize it so that a group of students can take one. It’s important for them to spend time in their wolf bodies outside the full moon, important that they get hands on hunting and combat practice as well. Many of them will be returning to hostile countries when the leave here, countries where they might spend days, weeks, at a time in the wild. The lycans in Romania, we call them Lups, they reject their human bodies entirely and spend ninety percent of their lives as wolves,” Blaine added with a half-smile and Kurt returned it weakly. They both knew Blaine was only stalling; trying to avoid whatever had brought Wes to their door in the middle of the night and made him decide to take a group of students on a hunting trip.

“Is this something you typically oversee personally?” He asked, getting out of the bed to join him by the window. Blaine’s half-smile turned rueful.

“No. No I don’t,” he replied raking his hands through his dark hair. “There are so many students the reality is there’s always a group or two on expedition. Allie does the organizing with the den mothers and I provide the guards.” Blaine fell silent and Kurt waited, but Blaine said nothing more. Kurt could feel the pressure of the unspoken burgeoning between them and he disliked how distant it made him feel, like he and Blaine were miles apart from each other. It felt wrong. They should be of the same mind, sharing each other’s burdens, not struggling to hold things up on their own.

“So why is this time different?” He asked when the silence had pressed too long, the plea for Blaine to let him in (let him help) unmistakable. Blaine stared at him for the longest time, imploring him with his gaze for things that Kurt couldn’t possibly know the roots of and therefore had no hope of providing, forgiveness, comfort, understanding. He did want to understand, he did not know how Blaine couldn’t know how desperately. When Blaine spoke his voice was rough, emotion tightening his throat and making it difficult for breath to pass through.

“It’s different because you’re being hunted.” The words hit Kurt like a slap in the face, so unexpected he could only blink at Blaine in reply to try to relieve their stinging. “In a week Balaur will be here,” Blaine continued. “You’re not ready and I need to do everything within my power to see that you are because I _won’t_ lose you, Kurt!” The sudden ferocity in Blaine’s voice was more frightening than the news that he thought a vampire coven would try to hurt him. Why? There was so much Blaine wasn’t telling him and that wasn’t right.

“I don’t understand,” the plea for more information came out a bit more like a growl of frustration. “You said the Conclave was just formality at this point and that nobody could hold what happened last moon against me given the circumstances.”

“Because it’s true, they can’t.”

“So why do you still think you have to take me into the wild for emergency boot camp? Why would this coven care about me, I’m a nobody from Columbus-”

“You’re mine!” Blaine shouted, “You’ve always been something to me and the minute they found out about it you became something to everyone else. They’ll try to get to me through you.”

“I know all of that!” Kurt shouted back, because there was nothing more painful to hear than how he put Blaine at risk. “I know I could be the chink in your armor. Why do you think I won’t enter a claim with you? Do you honestly think it’s indecision about _you_ holding me back?” Blaine’s scowl collapsed like he’d been doused in a bucket of water, staring stupefied at Kurt for a moment like such a prospect had never occurred to him.

“I always thought… There’s just so much you have to give up, your family, your humanity, your safety, your dreams. I understand if I don’t compare to all of that.”

“Blaine,” Kurt let his breath out in an aggravated whoosh, trying to get his temper under control. He wanted Blaine to open up and trust him and getting into a shouting match wouldn’t help. “Look, I’m old enough to accept that sometimes dreams don’t happen. I didn’t want my dad to have a heart attack. I didn’t want to give up on New York, but I chose to be close to him. I chose it and I refuse to regret it, not if it means we had more time together and I could be there for him. How could I possibly regret that? And it’s true, I thought I’d get back to New York one day, but life… life happens. Other things got in the way, some of them bad but some of them good too. Some of them so good I know there isn’t a stage out there that could give me the kind of happiness they give me.” The kind of happiness _you_ give me, Kurt thought and he knew that Blaine heard it.

He knew he heard it because he could feel it resonating over their bond. He could feel Blaine’s warmth and the surge of his emotions reaching out to surround him. He knew it because Blaine took his hands in his and looked into his eyes with such openness, such naked need, that Kurt wanted to cover him up, curl him into his embrace and wrap him up stopping anyone else from seeing it because that kind of vulnerability was dangerous and Blaine should never be hurt.

“I love you Kurt.” Blaine said it simply, like a forgone conclusion.

“I love you too.” He replied without adornment, blinking back the prick of tears because admitting it out loud was suddenly easy and he didn’t regret it, and he didn’t want Blaine to regret anything about it either. The hard part however was accepting that there would never be another. Not because he wanted others but because life was uncertain and often unfair and there were few guarantees (if any at all). And he could not be the thing that brought Blaine down.

He just couldn’t, and all signs pointed in the direction that he would.

“No, that’s not true. You make me stronger. Mated pairs are always stronger,” Blaine replied, squeezing Kurt’s hands as he read his frantic thoughts; but Kurt just shook his head in denial because they both knew it was a lie.

“Not when one of them is a newly turned convert,” Kurt returned. “I’m not a child. I know something’s going on. Something big enough to have you scared. And you don’t think that scares me? Because you said it yourself, I’m not ready for any of it.” He saw Blaine’s lip curl to snarl at the reminder of the danger to him and Kurt shook his head quietly again, stepping closer and letting Blaine’s arms wrap around him. They rested cheek to cheek listening to the pounding of their hearts for a moment before Kurt said, “I love you. It’s one thing to die. It’s another thing to die knowing I’m taking you with me. So until I know I actually can make you stronger I can’t tie us together like that; because it’s not just you and me. And if you cared to help me survive this at all you’d tell me what I’m up against. I know you want to protect me but you’re not, not by keeping me in the dark.”

He stepped back and looked Blaine in the eye. He let Blaine see his determination and let all of his mixed emotions flow freely between them: the fear and the anxiety mixed in with the trust and the desperate desire to protect what was theirs. What they had together was so young, so fragile, and he did not want it to be broken. What Blaine had built here with the pack was his and when Kurt thought of the others— Lina and Benito, Allie and all the children at the school, Chandler and Adam, Jeff and Wes, Quinn and Beth, shy Trent, acid tongued Kitty, and all the other protégés— it felt like it was becoming his too. He’d do whatever he could to protect them.

The silence stretched as Blaine considered him and Kurt watched thoughts he kept shielded pass behind his eyes and he hoped that Blaine believed how much he wanted with his whole heart to be believed in. Blaine had to believe they could do this together because Kurt was struggling to believe it himself. He didn’t know how tightly he was holding his breath until Blaine’s fingers brushed his palm and it escaped in one long shuddery rush. He looked down to watch his hand take Blaine’s, almost as if it were happening to someone else, and warmth began to spread throughout his chest as Blaine finally spoke.

“Balaur is the strongest Master Vampire in the region, his territory stretching all the way between Cincinnati and Cleveland, except of course for Westerville. It has never sat well with Balaur that Guild Law forces him to live peacefully with the other races, but he outright hates that Ian gave my family this land, land that is solely ours not to be shared with anyone else. There are many, lycan and vampire alike, who would like to be free of the guild but they will not rebel because they are afraid of what it is said I keep here. They covet it as much as they fear it.”

“The sword?” Kurt guessed and to his surprise Blaine shook his head.

“The crown,” he replied. “Men might have lined up for miles to pull the sword from the stone but the crown was their true objective. Do you remember the story I told you? Arthur was able to unify seven nations under one banner, to create a kingdom where human and subhuman alike could live in harmony. He did that with more than might, Kurt, he did it with magic. It was said that there wasn’t a man whose heart Arthur could not sway or knee he could not bend when he wore the crown and it is that power, the power to create an empire, that’s what Balaur and the others want.”

“Are you telling me that the crown that Arthur wore is here?” Kurt asked with widening eyes. “Blaine…”

“Yes, and you know how the story went. Arthur is the once and future king, the only man whose heart is pure enough to hold such power. Whatever it means by “he’ll come again”, until then it’s the duty of my bloodline to protect the crown. We can wield Excalibur to see that duty done, but not without risk. Power corrupts… quite easily.”

“And Balaur wants that power.” Blaine nodded and Kurt added, “And you think he’ll try to use me to get it?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time. My mother wasn’t my father’s true mate…” Kurt stilled in shock, aching at the sudden pain he felt coming from Blaine with no way to soothe it. “His true mate was a she-wolf named Tanya, a beta like you, and they were happy together with three strong cubs. Christian, Conner, and Cooper, each of them alphas… my brothers were a point of pride. Julian was a man with everything. There was a band of vampires from coven Balaur who went rogue, or so he insisted after. They were wreaking havoc in Dayton and Ian sent my father to put a stop to them. It became obvious that the attacks were just a ploy to draw my father and his mate out of Westerville. They focused everything they had on slaying Tanya and succeeded. My brother Christian, a new protégé at the time, was blinded in the battle.

“As for my father, Allie says feeling his pain across the bond was like having her heart touched by a branding iron. Julian howled for days, inconsolable and torn between life and death. She says that the guard was going to put him down to end his misery but he killed those who tried. Ian begged him to come back from the madness for my brother’s sake. Christian was crippled and they were all of them too young for leadership. My father didn’t die but he never got better either. He became obsessed with vengeance and paranoid that the crown would be taken away. One son had been crippled already, one mate killed. He needed another, needed more sons, needed to find a way to use the crown. He wanted Allie for a new mate and didn’t care much that she was an alpha like him. He’d have forced her but her position in the community was too great, he feared sparking a revolt. Her sister however was an omega, one of his service women. He bit her and that was that.” Blaine choked on the end of the sentence. Clamming up as anguish rolled through him and Kurt pulled him tightly to his chest. He held him because while the strength of his arms could not heal a broken heart, he knew they could provide shelter for a heart to fracture in and find its way back together, shelter from memories and demons from the past.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. Sorry that Blaine’s life had begun with such cruelty. Sorry that he had to live with the knowledge that he’d been born from a forced and loveless union. Nobody should have to live with that. He was sorriest that he couldn’t take the burden from Blaine’s shoulders.

“Things were _really_ bad after that. My father did things we don’t speak about. I lost my mother to his greed for more cubs and my brothers and sisters to brutal deaths that could have been prevented. He held the children at Dalton hostage and the other packs were talking about revolt. Balaur, everyone, they were saying the Guild couldn’t be trusted, that they were protecting a tyrant. There would have been a war, the end of our fragile peace—”

“Except you stopped him,” Kurt reminded him. Blaine had been braver than any teenager should be called to be. “You stopped him and the Guild still rules.”

“Yes, but Balaur and the others grumble that I am as likely to lead the pack into ruin as my father. I am his son after all, born of violence and madness, and my actions with David didn’t disprove them. That is why I know he would not hesitate to kill you. They have to. I’m the last of my line and now I’ve found a mate. They’ve got to strike now and I think they intend to. There is a rogue vampire loose in Columbus and if he continues killing and putting the subhuman community at risk I’ll have to hunt him down.”

“Like your father did,” Kurt put the pieces of the puzzle together and Blaine nodded. He was beginning to understand now why Blaine was so afraid. “So you invited them here. You gave them the shot they want at me on your own terms. You made me bait.” Kurt backed away from him, feeling light headed as terror at the prospect swelled up within him and Blaine reached for him plaintively. Kurt felt another surge, this one aggression, and he embraced it with relief because while it was still strange and frightening he was coming to trust the wolf. He had a feeling they’d need each other if they were going to survive this.

“Kurt, please understand. You’re the target no matter what I do. At least this way I have the advantage—”

“Stop it!” Kurt jerked his arm away from Blaine’s grasping hand, turning to push him back up against the wall. “You think I’m mad because I’m in danger? I’m mad because you put my life at risk, Blaine, and didn’t think you should tell me. You were going to lead me like a lamb to slaughter!” Blaine growled and within the span of a blink he’d grabbed Kurt by the shoulders and with alarming strength reversed their positions. Kurt’s breath left him in a whoosh as his back hit the wall.

“No! Nobody is going to touch you! I told you I won’t let any of them hurt you!” Blaine yelled at him.

“You’re not invincible you idiot! You’re down right vulnerable. You said it yourself. I’m a big target right where you’re weakest; so don’t make it easy for them! You can’t watch me every moment. _I’m_ my best defense and keeping me ignorant like some child is only making me defenseless! Why? Didn’t you think I could handle it? I’m not some baby lamb Blaine. How dare you not tell me?!”

“Kurt! I’m trying to pro—”

“Well don’t!” Not like that. His insides screamed and Kurt couldn’t help it. The urge to bite was too strong. He surged forward and claimed Blaine’s mouth in a bruising kiss, the clutch of his hands on Blaine’s face equal parts possessive and desperate. When Blaine moaned he sucked kisses along his jaw and down his neck, kissing a bruise there with fervor, only drawing away to pant a breath. His thoughts were frantic and open for Blaine to hear he was sure and that was fine. They were for him.

 _Don’t hide from me. Let me be with you. Let me fight for you._ That was the place the wolf knew it belonged, at the alpha’s side. Danger was nothing to them. They were meant to face danger together. The wolf did not fear danger only that his mate would come to harm and that was why the alpha _needed_ him. He should not fight alone. Why would the alpha keep him away? Didn’t he think Kurt was strong enough?

“No, Kurt.” Kurt raised his gaze and saw the wolf in Blaine’s eyes and wanted to fall into them. “I’m sorry. I think you were born for this. I think you’re going to grow into something Balaur should be afraid of. Right now though you’re vulnerable, so vulnerable, and that’s why you’re right. I shouldn’t have kept you in the dark about Balaur. You deserved to know.”

Kurt was calming, his mind clearing and feeling something more like human and yet again he was faced with his own contradictions. His biggest fear was that he wasn’t cut out to be Blaine’s mate. He held back from it because it was rife with danger and responsibility and yet he wanted Blaine’s confidence. He wanted more than that; he wanted his love and his trust and not a closed door between them.

“No more secrets?” He heard himself plead and Blaine tensed, deliberating a moment before nodding. Kurt narrowed his eyes and demanded suspiciously, “About everything?”

“About things that pertain directly to your safety,” Blaine chose his words carefully and Kurt began to wonder what more Blaine wasn’t telling him. Blaine continued, as if sensing his thoughts, “I wish I could, but there’s just a lot I can’t tell you. I’m sorry. It’s big—”

“Bigger than just us,” Kurt finished with a wince. He knew that it was unfair to ask Blaine for all his secrets, for a level of disclosure he shouldn’t give to anyone but his mate, when they weren’t tied in an official claim. It would be irresponsible of Blaine and he didn’t have that luxury. He had made so many concessions already so Kurt nodded his understanding and let Blaine step away from him. Every step felt like being torn at, like they were tethered and being pulled in opposite directions.

“If you want I’ll take you by your house so you can pack what you need for the expedition,” Blaine offered and Kurt nodded again, lost in his thoughts.

He didn’t like being separated from Blaine. Not by secrets, not by politics, not by the past, not by anything. He wanted to be Blaine’s mate his mind simplified. Kurt blinked away the sudden and surprising urge he had to cry. He wasn’t ready. Perhaps he never would be. He just wasn’t sure anymore why he was letting that stop him.

_*_*_

The sun was just peeking over the horizon when Blaine and Kurt pulled into the school yard. They’d stopped off at his little house and Kurt had thrown together a traveling bag (a couple changes of clothes and some toiletries). Then Blaine had said they had some others to pick up and Kurt had been surprised when one of those others turned out to be Quinn with Beth in tow.

“It’s been awhile since Beth’s last expedition and since Blaine seems to think bed rest means ‘fine time for a hunting trip’ I figured you guys could use a doctor along,” she’d explained as she climbed into the back of the van. Beth had waved sleepily at him, her blond hair still mused from her pillow. After that they’d picked up another blond. This one a petite omega who introduced herself shyly as Emma and Kurt wondered if she wasn’t the Emma Wes was supposed to be courting. Lina’s had been their last stop and to Kurt’s delight mother and son were joining them on the expedition as well.

“It will be Beni’s first. He should know how to be wild. I may not always be with him.” Something about that had bothered Kurt but he’d let it go on account of Quinn and the others being there. When they pulled up at the school there was a second van waiting and a small crowd that included five sleepy children between the ages of ten and thirteen, Allie, Wes, Adam, Chandler and Jeff. Allie was crouched next to one of the children, a girl with a nest of violent red hair who was sobbing into her hands. Kurt felt Blaine’s worry and he stared at the girl with concern as he watched Blaine hop out of the driver’s seat and jog over to the other van.

“Calvin must be gone again,” Quinn murmured with a concerned hum and Kurt glanced back at her in the rearview.

“Who’s that?” He asked, watching through the window as Blaine crouched beside the girl and she threw her arms around him.

“Calvin O’Brennan? He’s the youngest son of the alpha of Pack Dublin and that’s his twin Clara. She’s a beta like you, but with strong submissive tendencies. It comes out strongest when she and Calvin are separated. I doubt Allie would send one on an expedition without the other so Calvin must be missing again, “ she responded and Emma made a clucking sound with her tongue.

“He’s an imp that one. Oh he gives me and the other Den Mothers nightmares worrying about him. I’ll breathe easy when he’s a protégé I’ll tell you that,” Emma said just as a streak of brownish red fur came charging out of the trees. Kurt watched in awe as mid stride the brownish red blur became a boy of twelve, bright eyed and panting for breath with leaves stuck in his riotous red hair.

“I wonder where he snuck off to this early in the morning?” Lina murmured. In her lap Benito pressed his curious face to the window, taking in the scene outside with fascination. “Don’t you get any ideas, Piccolo.” She warned him with a jiggle. “You mind your elders hear me?” The little boy giggled and nodded as if in agreement, hugging the stuffed bear in his arms tightly as he murmured “yes mama”. Kurt found himself smiling quite without knowing why.

“Well wherever it was I hope it was worth it, because he’s in a lot of trouble with Blaine now,” Quinn remarked and with an eye for Beth dozing off on the seat next to her she murmured, “his parents didn’t give him up for him to put his life at risk on silly games.”

Kurt imagined Blaine, who had pulled the boy aside and was now glowering down at him and talking lowly, was telling him much the same thing. Something about the stubborn set to the boys jaw told Kurt the message might be falling on deaf ears.

~*~*~

The protégés settled the underage students in the van while Wes did a last check on supplies. Adam watched Calvin take Clara’s hand and climb with her into the van and sighed.

“Did he say he went to see Smythe?” He asked and Blaine shook his head.

“He was adamant he had to say goodbye to someone he refused to name. So we have to assume he did,” Blaine replied and Adam cursed.

“Christ! How did he get past the guards we set? That pup should be hung up by his tail.”

“He’s a twelve year old with a crush Adam.”

“On Sebastian Smythe! He’s a liability.”

“He’s a boy. What would you have me do throw him out?”

“Send him home and have his father knock some sense into him.”

“I’m considering it. Right now I’m more concerned with Smythe.”

“He hasn’t caused any trouble since he submitted to you.”

“That I know of.”

“Yeah. That you know of. And now it’s possible he knows you’re leaving the protection of the guard.”

“Well, we’ll just have to make sure we aren’t followed,” Blaine decided definitively and Adam nodded.

“Any word from Puck?”

“The wizard agreed to come. Burt’s recovering.”

“Thank god for that. Did you tell Kurt?” Blaine knew that Adam still thought he should tell Kurt about the danger to his family. Blaine still thought that would be playing right into the enemies’ hands. Blaine just gave him a look and Adam sighed. “He’s got to know eventually, and the sooner you tell him the less he’ll be angry. I do know that.”

“I know. As soon as Puck gets Burt and the rest of his family out of Lima, then I’ll tell him.”

Adam opened his mouth to reply but at that moment Chandler opened the left side door of the van he was in and poked his head out, cupping one hand next to his mouth and hollering, “hey, I thought this was an expedition? Come on already. I want to go hunting!”

“Hey! Mind that mouth puppy. That’s your Alpha you’re talking to,” Adam shouted back but there wasn’t any heat to it. He was too used to it. They all were. If Blaine had a quarter for every time Chandler said whatever was on his mind regardless of who he was talking to.

“Glad to know you’re paying such keen attention to what my mouth is doing.” Chandler grinned and a groan that sounded like Jeff’s came out of the car and a hand that also presumably belonged to him reached out to yank the teenager back into the car by the hair.

“Owe- hey, stop! Okay okay” Chandler batted at the hand, calling back to Blaine and Adam. “But seriously let’s go! At this rate it will be winter and all the wildlife will be gone by the time we get there!”

Adam rolled his eyes to the sky and muttered, “Heaven help me.” Blaine just grinned.


	19. Chapter 18: Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Puck and Lina come clean about their pasts, Quinn and Lina might have more in common than single motherhood and Kurt realizes he's Blaine's mate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Individual Chapter Warning: this chapter has non-con references as well as references to some disturbing imagery.

“Burt is secure?” The dispassionate voice on the other end of the line asked and Puck frowned. He wasn’t what you’d call squeamish but there was something about talking to David Thompson that gave him a case of the willies. Even over the phone you could tell the guy was just vacant. David was so removed from life he didn’t give the impression that he felt anything. It was like trying to talk to a Vulcan. Puck knew that Anderson was depending more on Crawford these days, in the hopes that David would complete his wander but for reasons unkown Thompson stuck around.

“Yeah, the attack did a number on his heart. Luckily I remembered how to summon Sue. Santana called her after Hummel mauled that Leech so I know she’s good with healing magic.”

“You’re keeping an eye on her? Not every wizard is a friend of the Guild.”

“I’ve got a friend watching her now.”

“So you delegated the safety of the father to my Alpha’s mate?” David asked coolly and Puck bristled.

“Look man, I’m one wolf and you have no idea what you’re up against. That assassin almost kicked both our asses. If not for Rachel Hummel’s dad would be Burt Jerky at the moment.”

“Are you prepared to get Burt and the rest of Kurt’s family out of Ohio?” David didn’t seem fazed by his rise in aggression, but then again nothing fazed David anymore.

“Yeah,” Puck let out a puff of breath. “But that’s not gonna be easy.”

“When Burt is movable give me word and I will have your flight arranged.”

“Fine but that’s not gonna do any good if I can’t get them on the plane! Finn and Carol might agree to go without too much fight but I’ve gotta feeling Burt’s not going anywhere without seeing Kurt.”

“Not possible.”

“Look, I know Anderson’s not letting Kurt step a foot out of Westerville but it would go a lot easier if Kurt could at least call and—”

“That’s not possible either.”

“Why the hell not?! I know Anderson wants to keep this hushed but it’s all going to bust if I can’t get his family to trust me. Help me out here.”

“It’s not possible because Kurt is no longer in Westerville or in reach of a phone.”

“What?” Puck gaped, unable to believe that Blaine had let Kurt leave the safety of his land.

“He is on expedition in an undisclosed location.”

“ _Why_?”

“Because Blaine is aware he cannot keep knowledge of the vampire threat from Kurt for long, nor can he ignore the possibility of Balaur bringing the killer to them during the conclave. Kurt is disadvantaged being newly converted so Blaine seeks to strengthen his wolf in the hopes that it will be strong enough to save him in the event of a battle.”

It wasn’t a bad plan as far as last resorts went. Of course there was something to be said for human ingenuity but at the end of the day when it came to a fight the wolf knew what it was doing. Hunting was more about instinct than it was tactics. That was something the tamer lycan’s he’d gotten to know in Columbus just didn’t understand. Puck for one had never fought anything as fierce as the wolf trying to protect its friend he’d encountered last full moon. Kurt’s wolf wasn’t any joke, beta or not, and if Kurt could learn the balance between giving the wolf freedom and maintaining control, well… Puck might just bet on him yet.

“They’re scheduled to return early next week. That is obviously time enough for Balaur to murder his family, so it is imperative that you—”

“Ok, Jesus” Puck filled his cheeks with breath and let it out slowly. “I got it. I’ll figure something out.”

Puck hung up the phone with a smart snap and grit his teeth in frustration. The trouble was he had no idea how to get Kurt’s family on board with leaving the country on such short notice for an indefinite amount of time on the scraps of information he was allowed to give them. He could probably get Finn on his side, once he got over the fact that Puck hadn’t trusted him enough to come out of the closet about being lycan. Carol would probably see the need before Burt and he wasn’t sure if even Burt was going to be as hard to convince as Rachel.

Puck walked back into the living room, his ratty couch now occupied by a half-naked mechanic wrapped up like a mummy in seeping bandages. Thankfully it wasn’t blood, but whatever concoction that Sue had whipped up to speed his bones healing. He didn’t need to ask where the witch was, he could smell whatever she was brewing in the kitchen and feel Rachel’s irritation with the woman like it was sandpaper against his skin. Sue was at the stove when Puck walked in, a miniature cauldron propped on top of his burners was emitting a foul odor so poignant it made his eyes water.

“Hey there young and dom-less,” the tall blond witch greeted him with a smirk as she lifted something from one of the leather pouches she wore attached to her belt. Puck knew from observation that though the bags never got larger than the size of a fanny pack they could hold things twice their size. What Sue held in her hands now was grotesque looking, a bloodied organ harvested from some poor creatures chest, because it looked in fact to be a heart. Rachel gasped in alarm, her teeth flashing and feet bracing as Puck recoiled at the sight and Sue rolled her eyes, smacking the heart down on his counter and whipping a set of long knives out of another pouch she wore.

“Calm down babies it’s a baboon heart,” she said, chopping away at the organ with knife skill worthy of a master chef. “A couple swigs of mama Sue’s cure all cardiac elixir and your mechanic will have a heart four years younger.”

“Noah this woman is insane!” Rachel turned to him and declared. The way she was plugging her nose made her voice clogged and nasally as she hissed through her teeth. “She was trying to make me cry earlier so that she could ‘sweeten’ the brew.”

“Virgin tears are so sweat.” Sue murmured in response with a far off look, as if she was lost in the memory of their sweetness. Rachel was so offended by that notion that she dropped her hands to her hips and all but stomped her foot at the woman.

“I am not a virgin! I’ll have you know that I have had sexual intercourse every full moon since I was eighteen years old and I—”

“Eighteen?” Puck demanded incredulously and Rachel flushed. “I was humping anything that would stand still long enough when I was ten. How the hell did you lose your virginity at eighteen?”

“Even though some of us are lacking in self-control, _my_ father’s always taught me that moon or no moon I shouldn’t throw myself around and that I should wait till I was a woman. And in case you forgot, the age of majority is eighteen Noah, not ten.”

“Yeah but nobody actually waits till their majority anymore. Weren’t you ever just horny?” Rachel’s cheeks darkened a far too intriguing shade of red and Puck suddenly wanted to know all about what Berry had gotten up to in her protégé years. Unfortunately she wasn’t having any of it.

“Can we please move on from the subject of my sex life and talk about the fact that you’ve betrayed our pack and made me an accomplice?!”

“Hey I didn’t ask you to follow me.”

“You’d be dead if I hadn’t!” She huffed and Puck bristled at the reminder. It was one thing to shove that fact down Thompson’s throat when he was going all Vulcan on him, it was another thing to have Rachel do it. “You’d think you’d be grateful.” She finished with a sniff and Puck grit his teeth.

“I’d be grateful if I’d never heard any of this.” Sue muttered and Puck shot her a glare before grabbing Rachel’s arm and tugging her out of the kitchen and down to the bedroom out of earshot.

“Could you not man handle me please? I am capable of walking on my own.” She hissed at him, attempting to break her arm from his grip and failing, puffing up like a fish when she didn’t manage it. Puck had to bite back a grin. “You think this is amusing!” She demanded and he quickly wiped the smile off his face.

“No, I think we’re in trouble.”

“ _You’re_ in trouble. Noah, Shelby will throw you out of the guard.”

“Yeah I figured that, but you know sometimes you’ve got to take a hit for the team.”

“ _We’re_ supposed to be a team. I thought this is what you wanted. I don’t understand what pull Anderson has on you.”

“He saved my life!” Admitting it was like shucking off a lead weight. “I got too cocky. I’d been a stray for so long I thought I could handle anything. I got in with this chick, human, thought I was in love… I know, it was stupid. I guess I thought I could be wolf enough for the both of us if anyone had a problem with it. Her daddy did, big time, and daddy had powerful friends. You know those Holy Roller types. They’ve got the Hunter order on speed dial. Suddenly I’m running for my life and I’m not exactly a chump in a fight but I barely got out of there alive. They were tailing me and I was leaving a trail of blood for them to follow but I kept going. I thought if I could just get to the safe zone I could heal up and I’d have a shot. I didn’t make it I passed out somewhere outside of Westerville and I’d be dead meat if it weren’t for Anderson and his patrol.”

Rachel’s expressive eyes were soft with tenderness even if her lips were still set in a firm line and her voice clipped when she said, “Noah any decent wolf would have saved you from Hunters. You don’t owe this man your life just because he saved it.”

“Yeah, I kind of do though Rach.” Puck sighed. Before Rachel could open her mouth to refute him he shook his head. Time to lay it all out on the table then. Maybe it would ruin whatever this thing was building between them but it was a risk he’d take because he couldn’t do what he had to do without her help. “Because we all know Westerville means sanctuary, and maybe that doesn’t mean much to someone who has never needed it, but it meant everything to me when I was bleeding out and the woman I thought I loved was locked in a basement with her bible thumping parents ranting about how she’d let the devil put his spawn in her. They’d have killed her and the baby if Quinn hadn’t been smarter and when she had nowhere in the world to turn there was Anderson.”

Rachel stared at him, her eyes moist for a second or two before she blinked the moisture away. Now she knew. He had a daughter outside of a mating bond and a past lover living under Anderson’s roof, so it was more than just gratitude that earned Blaine his loyalty. He might be a failure as a father but he could do this for Beth. He could do his part to make sure she had a safe place to grow up and live out her life. He owed her that much.

_*_*_

The drive from Westerville to Morehead Kentucky took four and a half hours. The fact that they were riding in separate cars didn’t stop the others from including them in conversation, thoughts flowing easily from mind to mind within their small group. When they stopped briefly for gas two hours in Kurt noticed they received more than one odd look from passerby. Though they were under strict instruction to remain in the van (and thankfully Calvin had been given some clothes to wear) they were to the outside observer two vehicles full of mostly silent people trading looks and occasionally bursting into fits of laughter. It felt strange to Kurt too, but there was also something pleasantly intimate about being in the midst of so many other thoughts and emotions, to see the auras and feel connected to each of them. There were down sides, like the headache he got halfway through the ride. He couldn’t help but think that he’d been striving for human connection for so long and assimilated to such a meager diet that it was overload being accepted into the pack mental stream, too rich a meal too quick.

Blaine noticed the green pallor to his skin and quieted the others, granting Kurt a respite from the constant din of their thoughts and press of their emotions. The hand which had been laying innocently on Kurt’s thigh began to massage his tense muscles, a soothing gesture that was more for support than practical use and Kurt closed his eyes with a slight smile of thanks and drifted off to sleep. Closer to their arrival Blaine woke him and explained to both vans how things were going to work. Morehead was a small town situated right in the middle of Kentucky’s largest expanse of forest land. Much of it had been divided into national parks but unlike the forest in Westerville they were not safe zones. Kentucky was a subhuman hostile state and its forests and parks were protected not just by the usual rangers but occasionally by Hunters. It didn’t take a smart man to know there would be wolves in the forest. Its acreage stretched down into Tennessee so it was sure to be home to plenty of strays, rogues, and smaller packs, and Hunters of all ilk went where the game was. 

They didn’t stop when they got to the town, heading straight for a house at the edge of the wood, slipping through the mostly empty streets like ghosts in the early morning. The house was owned by a wizard named Spider (though Kurt doubted that was his real name) who greeted Blaine with a firm handshake and spoke to him in fast whispers but otherwise didn’t say a word to any of them. Kurt raised his eyebrow at the creepiness of that and Jeff grinned and informed him that Spider apparently never talked to them. The less he knew the better everyone figured in case Hunters showed up.

Blaine frowned at something Spider whispered in his ear before nodding at the man and gesturing for them to follow him as he headed for the back of the house. There Emma stepped forward to give them special instruction. Beth and Benito would stick by Lina. The older children she sorted into pairs choosing an ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ for each group and informing them they had to stick to their roles even if they thought they were better suited to something else. There was some grumbling from Calvin when his sister was chosen as the Alpha in their pair but a stink eye from Blaine quickly quieted him. Kurt watched Blaine closely as the children got organized. Though his countenance did not waver Kurt could feel the shift in his mood to worried, and he wondered at it. The others didn’t seem to catch on but Kurt somehow knew that the tension in Wes’s shoulders had something to do with it. He wasn’t surprised by the stinging he felt somewhere in the region of his heart when he realized the two were holding a conversation to themselves. He’d already come to grips with the fact that though he didn’t like being outside of Blaine’s confidence he had no real right to gripe about the fact that Blaine didn’t immediately run everything by him when they were unmated. Or so he kept repeating to himself. Eventually he’d believe it.

The children paired to his satisfaction Blaine led them out back to the edge of the wood and Kurt felt his stomach swoop with nerves. He did not know what to expect from the week to come, only that it would change him. He was certain that he would step into that great forest one man and come out another, and if it was still possible to turn back to the life he had known at this point, now was the moment to do so. He did not. He had accepted that he was lycan before then. What Kurt had come to the wild to learn was what it meant to be _wolf_ because he needed more than just control over his instincts, he also needed trust. If he could do that he might be strong enough to help Blaine rather than put him at constant risk.

When the others stepped into the forest Kurt followed them. When they had walked far enough that Blaine was sure they would not be seen he stopped them and they stripped. Quinn kissed Beth goodbye and stood back. They shifted one by one, the young cubs first in case they needed guidance, then the older students, the protégés and finally Adam, Wes, and Blaine.

And then they walked.

-*-*-

They walked for miles and at the beginning they were rambunctious, eager to run after weeks of being cooped up, the Alpha having to keep firm command of the older cubs to prevent them running ahead. Their first priority was scouting for temporary territory and that meant finding the ideal location with lots of coverage and a good spot for den digging. Bringing cubs as young as Benito and Beth on expedition was dangerous but necessary. Cubs were a part of life and the wild was as much a part of them as civilization (if not more) and it was important that each of them know how to survive in it, especially when it came to rearing their children.

With Quinn back at the house with Spider Blaine assigned Kurt to be in charge of Beth. While they could cover ground more quickly than a human even walking, it was important for them to keep up a good pace and stay out of the open. Every predator worth its salt knew that the young were the easiest targets and therefore they must be guarded carefully. Blaine was anxious to see them safely tucked in a den where protecting them would be much easier. I they were attacked in the open it would be largely up to Kurt and Lina to see to their survival. Though Blaine and Wes forged on a bit ahead of the others—with Jeff and Chandler flanking them and Adam bringing up the rear—he was keenly aware of each of them, sorting through their different emotions and responses to his instructions and taking notes for Allie on which student needed brushing up on command signals, which cubs were displaying overtly aggressive instincts and had trouble taking on subordinate roles.

He tried not to let Kurt’s presence distract him but he was incapable of ignoring him completely. Not solely because the grey wolf’s every move seemed to fascinate him either but because Kurt was as much a student as any of the others. Blaine had meant what he said about this being a crash course so throughout their long walk that first day he was a constant presence in Kurt’s mind, a continuous stream of instruction and guidance. _Watch how the older cubs watch me, see how the alphas imitate my signals and the betas follow? They are learning to communicate. In a hunt you can’t rely on words. You have to know how to read the bodies of your pack mates until you can almost anticipate each other’s moves. Those tracks are bob cat, remember them._

Kurt listened intently, a focused pupil if not a little bit overwhelmed by trying to remain observant of his surroundings and keep up with an overly excited cub whose only real desire at the moment was to play and explore. Blaine looked back to see Kurt untangling Beth from the brush she’d gotten snared in, probably attracted to the bright color of berries in the bushes. Benito was sniffing curiously at them, opening his mouth to gnaw on one of the purple dots that littered the forest floor and Lina pulled him back by his scruff. 

_“How angry would Quinn be if I fed her daughter to a bob cat?”_ Kurt asked and Blaine laughed. He wanted more than anything to go back and walk with Kurt to spend a lazy afternoon together playing with the cubs. Kurt was good with them, no matter what he thought, and Blaine just wanted to be with them but there would be time enough for that later. As ever the world was moving around them and out there forces were shifting, and still so much that Kurt didn’t know. Spider’s news that morning had been troubling. Blaine had wondered what was taking Ian so long to come to him and now he knew. All was not right in the Wizard’s Guild.

The sooner he started Kurt’s combat training the better and though traveling with the cubs slowed them it was imperative they go to den before nightfall, so Blaine pushed them onward.

-*-*-

If it was Blaine’s intention to exhaust him into relying on his instincts he’d succeeded. By nightfall Kurt was so bone weary he was moving on auto pilot and thankfully that pilot seemed designed for hours of roaming and constant vigilance. It was a little awe inspiring how _capable_ he was capable of being: ears open at all-times taking in sounds, nose busy cataloguing scents, and eyes crossed keeping one eye on Beth and the other on Blaine up ahead for signal when the pace was picking up or slowing down.

It was nice to share a task with Lina, who had more experience than he did with children (never mind lycan ones who all but disappeared into their wolves when they were as small as Beth and Benito). She seemed to have an instinct for when one of the cubs was going to decide it didn’t like how close the other was walking and the situation required a wrestle for dominance or for when they decided it was time to engage the older cubs in rough housing and interrupt their lesson with Emma (or generally make nuisances of themselves). Though she assured him that he was doing fine Kurt was all but ready to come through on his threats to feed them to a big cat by midday. By sunset they’d reached a lake and Kurt could have cried in relief when Blaine finally allowed them to halt to slack their thirst. Even Beth and Benito were exhausted by that point, too tired to walk another step, Lina and Kurt had been carrying them more and more as the afternoon progressed.

Kurt allowed himself to plop onto the sandy soil of the lake in a weary heap when Blaine ordered a scout for good digging ground and it became apparent that they wouldn’t be moving again. The lake was apparently good territory, as they wanted to be nearby a water source, but it would naturally draw other forest creatures and it was up to Blaine and the scouting party to figure out just what was nesting where and find a safe place for them. Kurt felt Blaine deliberating on whether or not he should bring Kurt with him so that he could get more experience tagging scents but he decided against it at the sight of him on the ground in a heap with Benito and Beth tugging on his ears and Kurt was grateful. He chose Chandler, Jeff and one of the older cubs (that girl who had been crying when they drove up what seemed a lifetime ago now).

Kurt was content to lay there catching his breath, too tired to even mind being chewed on. Lina settled beside him, the mixture of browns, greys, and whites that made up her coat blending in with the forest floor. Her blue eyes were bright in this form, fierce in a way that let the world know there was a keen intelligence behind the animal gaze, but strangely there was a kindness to them. A kindness Kurt felt when she nuzzled against him, bathing him with soft licks from the sweat and dirt he’d collected with the days travel.

 _“I don’t ever want to move again,”_ he thought and Lina’s amusement sprinkled over him.

_“Remember this the next time you hear one of the alpha’s say we omega’s are regulated to the care of cubs because we are weakest.”_

_“I’ll get Blaine to assign them den duty for a month.”_

_“You did very well today, Kurt.”_

_“Really? Because back when we spotted that bear trap I almost tossed Beth in it. If this is parenthood I don’t think I’m cut out for it.”_ Lina huffed, about as close to a laugh as they ever got in these skins and playfully grabbed his ear between her teeth.

 _“Good parents are not the ones who never wish to do their children bodily harm. Just the ones that do and don’t.”_ Her thought ended on an audible yelp, and Kurt lifted his head to see that Benito and Beth had grabbed ahold of her tail, beginning a game of tugging that while not horrendously painfully was probably still mightily uncomfortable with their sharp little jaws clamped tight around her flesh. She got up quickly, yanking her tail from their eager grasps and snarled at them in warning when they yipped at her heals.

 _“Hush!”_ She barked at them. Grabbing Benito by his scruff she separated him from his accomplice and plopped him on the other side of Kurt. _“Enough now Piccolo or I will allow Kurt to watch you, and you heard him. He is fond of bear traps.”_ Kurt laughed and Lina growled playfully at him. _“Just wait until you have one of your own. We will see who laughs then.”_

 _“I won’t be doing that actually.”_ Kurt informed her, trying to ignore the sudden queasiness in his belly.

 _“I wouldn’t be so sure. Don’t tell me you didn’t see the way Blaine was watching you? He can’t be the only one who imagines all the handsome cubs you’ll have.”_ Something about that idea made something inside Kurt go warm and perk with interest. He was certain somehow they’d have _beautiful_ cubs, but he was pretty sure that was just biology talking. Sure objectively he didn’t mind the idea of having children with Blaine. He was rather in love with him and he’d never been opposed to the idea of children, so sure, but the practicality that was involved, the actual thought of bearing a child scared him shitless. So no. Kurt did not think about the children they could have.

 _“No.”_ He tried to tell Lina as much but it didn’t help his case any that Benito chose that moment to heed his mother’s warning and settle down for a nap, scrambling over Kurt’s legs and toddling his way to Kurt’s soft belly and burrowing a space for himself there. That melting feeling in the region of his heart that was just because Benito reminded him so much of Blaine with the way he smelled and his fuzzy black fur. It was all too easy to imagine that Blaine had looked this way as a child; and as Beth followed the younger cubs lead and rushed up to burrow for a spot beside him Kurt wondered about Blaine’s childhood. He knew from the few details Blaine had shared with him that there had been moments of joy but he knew also that there had been great pain. What he knew was very little he realized.

 _“Did you ever meet any of Blaine’s family?”_ He asked, not really expecting that she had but hoping that she might know something of them. She had been in the pack long enough. Maybe there were stories.

 _“Only one of them,”_ She answered to Kurt’s surprise. “But all of them are remembered. We take care not to speak of it around Blaine. It makes him sad to remember them.” Kurt could understand that. It was the reason he had not called his family or any of his friends, even though Blaine had told him he could once he had a better handle on his instincts. He knew that when he did he would have to tell them and it would make the fact that he was no longer human real in a way that nothing else could. He would never be one of them again. Though he was certain his family would always love him, he would always be different from them now and always separated by those differences. It felt like being in the closet all over again only this time he knew for sure he’d become something his father feared, something Burt mistrusted and voted to keep away from the public. He knew; he’d watched him do it, he’d sat and argued over the politics of it so many times from the safe seat his humanity had given him. He didn’t call because there was only so strong he could be, and always at the center of his strength had been the knowledge that he was loved at the very least by his father and he was very afraid he’d crumble if that was taken away.

Yes, Kurt understood not wanting to think about what you had lost and he knew that Lina uniquely understood it too.

 _“You want to know his past, yes? You want to know the child he was, to better understand the man he is. You want to know where he hurts?”_ Lina asked and Kurt could feel her mood change, a sudden sobriety descending over him wherever her thoughts touched and he stilled, feeling their channel of speech narrow to block out the others. Her blue eyes stared intensely into his and he thought yes because that was all the answer he had. _“Then I will tell you what it is not my place to say and then I must ask you something that will hurt you, and for that I am sorry.”_

_“Lina, what—”_

_“Blaine, first… please, Kurt. I won’t be able to finish if we start with the other. He has told you of the nature of his parents claim?”_

_“They weren’t true mates. He bit her because he wanted more cubs.”_

_“That is true. What he has probably not told you is that it was a wizard who fostered his father’s greed for cubs, who fed his fears that all of his children could be murdered and his line come to an end.”_

_“Ian?”_ Kurt asked in disbelief, unable to imagine why the Merlin would have done such a thing.

 _“Another,”_ Lina denied and Kurt was relieved. He knew how Blaine trusted Ian. _“A dark mage by the name of Dagan. There is good and bad in everything in the world Kurt, including magic, and there is magic that only the darkest of wizards would dare dabble in. The Guild does not sanction the practice of black magic and tries to police those who would do harm with it, but there will always be dark mages. Dagan was such a man, many feared with a power to rival the Merlin’s but always they were comforted by the sanctuary they could find here. Perhaps that is what Dagan wanted, to destroy the people’s faith in the Alpha’s of Westerville, but truthfully no one really knows what he hoped to gain by all that he did._

_“Dagan came to Blaine’s father when he was still a young man, enticing him with promises of power and wealth beyond anything he’d ever known. Julian was wary, for Ian’s warnings were constant, but he became convinced of the mage’s powers to fulfill his desires when Dagan correctly found his mate. Tanya was from a pack in California and when Dagan had her brought it was said that their first sight of each other had every bell in the world ringed and the moon stayed hung in the sky for a month to come. But that of course is just myth. What was real was how they felt for each other. Their love was great and Julian began to trust in Dagan’s council._

_“Dagan predicted the birth of each of their sons, assuring that the cubs within Tanya’s belly would each be strong alphas if she drank this or that concoction, if they called it by this or that name. After Christian was born, a male alpha as the mage had promised, Julian had complete faith in Dagan and when Conner and Cooper followed he had the mage move into the manor so that his council and his blessing would always be near at hand. Julian and the Merlin fought, but Julian was so blessed many said the Merlin was only jealous of Dagan’s power and that Julian had replaced him. To them one wizard was as good as another._

_“Then, one day, vampires from Balaur’s coven went rogue. Dagan warned Julian not to interfere, for he said that he saw a curse coming from the coven, a curse that would plague his house for centuries to come, but Ian called upon his oaths and demanded Julian honor them. He did, and when he did the vampires slew his mate… they ripped out her throat, and they say the world stood still and every man and woman of wolf spirit there ever was felt their heart rend in two. Blaine’s father was never the same after that. He believed himself cursed and believed Dagan’s warnings that Balaur would destroy his house. He blamed Ian for the death of his mate and the crippling of his heir. Dagan promised him power over his enemy and it was he who urged Julian to take another mate and sire more sons. When his pursuit of Allie angered the pack and people began to wonder at Dagan’s influence over their Alpha, he advised Julian to claim her sister Nora instead and to act quickly before the curse could set in._

_“Julian bred her almost as quickly as he claimed her and Blaine was the first of their children. His birth was difficult… there is much a wolf needs from their mate when they are expecting but Julian was absent, locked away with Dagan for long hours plotting and planning and, now it is known, practicing black magic. Blaine was healthy if small at his birth, and an alpha as Julian desired, but Nora had been greatly weakened by the ordeal. Allie warned Julian not to try breeding her again but Julian would not heed her. He got her with child and she lost the babe before its birth and the next and the next…”_ Lina’s thoughts faded away and Kurt realized that the long miserable whine he heard was hers and he licked her muzzle, bathing her with comfort and trying to halt the cold shuddering of his own body. He could not fathom what kind of pain Blaine’s mother had been in, what kind of monster his father must have been to subject her to constant rape and child loss. And he knew this story was hard for Lina to tell, having been through something similar but the woman seemed determined to go on despite it.

_“Julian was furious. He’d have killed poor Nora if not for Allie. She did what she could for her sister but she could not keep Julian away. That was his right as her mate, to take her however and whenever he wished. Nora was pitied and the pack angered but no one dared go against him. Blaine was not very much loved by her, but he was close with his brothers. He was closest of all to Conner though twelve years separated them, and ten from Cooper, and fourteen from Christian the eldest. Conner was bright and easy going while Cooper saw Blaine as something of a rival. It must have been hard for a boy of ten to lose his mother so suddenly, and to realize that nothing he ever did again would bring the love of his father back. For Julian there was always the thirst for more sons. Allie told me that she always thought Cooper resented both Blaine’s birth for ruining his father’s chances at more sons and his father for never noticing how hard he tried to make up for all the children Nora lost. Christian was a hero to them all but he was not around for much of Blaine’s life. Crippled he had lost his father’s love and his place as his father’s heir but never his love for the people or his desire to make the world better for them. He left home at sixteen when Blaine was barely older than Benito to travel with Ian and though Julian cursed him as a traitor he worked closely with the Guild and human government as a lycan ambassador.”_

Lina’s thoughts fell away again but Kurt’s mind had raced ahead. He had begun to piece it together.

_“Christian was the one you knew.”_

_“Yes._ Lina admitted. _“He came to Italy to speak to those who might be sympathetic to lycans, who might push our government to go against the pope and create laws for the protection of his kind. It was dangerous work, for Rome is not only home to the Vatican but the power seat of the order of Hunters. They are led by the Medici family who many call the holy house of butchers. Christian braved the danger to make speeches in places kept secret and only whispered about at night. By day he was just a young man like any other, a kind man who stopped to ask a young girl why she was crying. I was eleven and I had lost my brother Lorenzo somewhere in the crush of tourists. We weren’t supposed to be out on our own. Always we were watched; sometimes I felt more like my father’s prisoner than his daughter. I had convinced Enzo to escape with me, though our father would be angered, convinced that as his favorite his anger would pass. Only I had lost Enzo and though we are… though we were twins he was born blind. I was so afraid he would be lost forever, or hurt, and Christian offered me kindness when so many others passed me by. He was blind himself and yet together we found Enzo huddled in a corner to escape the crowds with his hands pressed over his ears. I thought Christian was magic. I didn’t realize he could smell me and use his nose to find Enzo. I only hoped that my brother would grow up to be as beautiful and confident as I thought him to be._

_“I was so enamored of him, Kurt. Lorenzo and I came back to that square as often as we dared to sit with him and hear him talk of America. He was my magic man, for though I tried to sneak up on him often he always knew when I arrived and when I was only pretending to have left. He talked to me like I was a woman grown and I told him my dreams and he did not laugh at them. I wished I was a woman grown like him instead of a silly girl who he would only ever greet as ‘little sister’. He taught Lorenzo to play the harmonica and together they sang like they had fallen from heaven. He taught us how to dream of peace Enzo and I. He listened to me talk of my father and he talked to me about lycan’s in ways I had never heard them talked about. He was our teacher and our friend… and I killed him.”_

_“No!”_ The thought burst inside Kurt’s mind and Lina flinched and whined low. _“Lina you wouldn’t! Whatever happened I know that you wouldn’t hurt anybody.”_

 _“But I did!_ She insisted. _“You don’t know who I was back then, Kurt. The things Christian said to me confused me and made me afraid; because to be wrong meant that I was living with the monsters. It meant that my father, my brothers, and my uncles were not the holy warriors I thought they were. I loved them and to my shame I love them still. I brought my questions to my papa, Benito Medici, and he asked me where I had heard such heresy and I told him. I did kill him Kurt. If not for me Christian would be alive, and if not for my family and their blood thirsty execution of his child Julian might never have declared war on the Guild.”_

Kurt was reeling. Lina was a Medici. The Medici’s were… butchers, Hunters, the head of the Hunter order. _The holy house of butchers_ his mind whispered and Lina whined again, furtively licking at his muzzle, as if in apology. That was why Lina had never told anyone she was a convert he realized. Kurt was hated by some for merely being human once. If anyone found out that Lina was the daughter of the head of the Medici family… well, the way she was trembling against his side was telling enough. He wouldn’t tell Blaine, couldn’t his mind supplied, but he needed to know it all. He could barely think, but he did know that. He returned her licks, slow and soothing, trying to calm her enough that her thoughts were more than a panicked mess.

_“Lina, you did really well telling me. You were so brave, but I need you to be brave just a little longer okay. Tell me what you meant. What did Julian do when Christian died?”_

_“Executed! He didn’t just die Kurt, my papa tortured him. He skinned him… that’s what he does. He has coats he has made from wolf skins. It was televised, a warning to any other ‘terrorists’ that might come from other countries, and a warning to all the people Christian had spoken to. But he had a message for Julian in particular. He told him God’s hand was everywhere and that God would strike him down, starting with his spawn. And then papa killed him and Julian was so afraid… he trusted no one, no one but Dagan. He went to war against the world it seemed. He closed the forest off to everyone, even those who lived in Annehurst. Parents were separated from their children, mates from their mates if they worked in either the manor or the school. When a child went missing from inside the school at first it was thought she had run away but then after a time it happened again, and more and more frequently. Dagan and Julian, they were stealing them, practicing magic on them. No one knows why, something to do with breeding more betas and purifying the blood. Anything to gain the invincibility he was after._

_“Conner discovered it first and Julian murdered him to keep him quiet. Blaine’s sisters were born in those years, Brianne fist and Nora finally succumbed to death giving birth to Brea. They were Blaine’s solace in a mad world. He was fourteen when he and some of his classmates managed to escape the school and the forest, but he had to leave his sisters behind. I don’t think he has ever forgiven himself for leaving them there. He went to every Alpha he could get to, pled personally with the Guild Council and told them of the horrible things happening inside Julian’s domain; how none of the children were safe and even Julian’s own were not spared. He told him how Cooper, ever eager to please his father, had volunteered to help his father with his rituals when he was just ten years old. By the time he was grown the magic had so twisted his body and his mind he could have been mistaken for Frankenstein’s creature. He died rabid, unrecognizable as anything close to human…._

_“It was devastating; to lose so many young at once, but none of them would move to strike against Julian. They were afraid. He had power tied to this land and his blood line, power even the Guild dared not go up against. They couldn’t even step inside the forest without being at its mercy. Blaine was the only one who could potentially combat it. He had Anderson blood. He could lead an army back inside if he was strong enough. Nobody believed he was, including Blaine. Cooper was the reason he went after his father in the end. Cooper was mindless, bloodthirsty… they found him eating his sisters one day and it was Julian who finally killed him._

_“Blaine… Blaine was fifteen, heartbroken, being stalked by vampires eager to pick off the last Anderson heir while he was young and vulnerable, and being told by Ian that only he had the power to save everyone and to do so meant killing his own father. I lit the flame that started that fire Kurt and when he knows… when he knows he’ll kill me and my Benito will be alone and I can’t let that happen. I can’t.”_ Lina said no more after that, her thoughts disappearing inside a surge of agony so intense Kurt was rocked with it. She laid her head on her white paws and shuddered, that pitiful whining from earlier the only sound she seemed capable of making and Kurt knew she’d fled so far inside the recesses of her own mind that only the wolf remained. The wolf was protection.

The wolf was also omega, and clearly cowed by the strength of Kurt’s own volatile emotions and the curious stares of the others as they drew closer.

 _“Is she alright?”_ Adam asked and when Kurt didn’t immediately answer his thoughts pressed against him with more force. _“Kurt?”_

 _“Fine… she’s fine.”_ She wasn’t, but she would be Kurt promised himself. When they had a moment alone and she was feeling up to it he’d tell her that he didn’t blame her and that Blaine wouldn’t either. Maybe at first he’d be angry, hurt, everything you felt when you learned you’d been harboring the person who’d betrayed your brother and sent him to his death, but he’d see as Kurt saw that Lina was not to blame, guilty of loving and trusting her father and nothing more, because that was the kind of man he was.

At least Kurt hoped so. 

_“Did you punish her?”_ The boy named Calvin asked, sticking his ginger snout close to Lina’s rump and sniffing. _“Clara gets like this whenever she’s being punished.”_

 _“No…”_ Kurt had to scramble for a reason for Lina’s sudden regression and settled on a version of the truth. “We were just sharing stories about our families. That’s hard for her because she really misses them I think.” Though the others seemed to buy it, crowding close to rub their pelts against her and exchange comforting licks. Calvin sniffed Kurt as if he could scent lies and stared at him with golden eyed intensity.

 _“I think you’re lying. You shouldn’t punish her. You’re nobody. You’re not even Blaine’s mate.”_ Kurt didn’t think twice about the urge he had to bite the kid in the face, he just did it, Calvin leaping back with a startled yelp with tail tucked in and ears lowered submissively. He already had to deal with the doubts of Flint and Headmaster Strand, the hell if he was letting some half grown cub talk down to him.

 _“Miss Emma he bit me!”_ Calvin sounded so shocked Kurt really shouldn’t feel like grinning but he did.

 _“Bite him back if you dare, or else mind your tongue pup,”_ the young omega replied, sounding amused. Calvin of course didn’t dare and at that moment Blaine returned with Jeff and Chandler and Kurt watched silently as Blaine appraised the situation quickly and guided Lina back with gentle dominance that Kurt couldn’t help but love him for. Blaine was such a good man, and he really seemed not to know it. So much of his life was about the whole, even in the most basic of human needs—the need for love—Blaine was second; ‘bigger than us’ was becoming something of their motto. And now there was this, a secret that if discovered Kurt knew would bring him nothing but more demons.

In this he would need help, and if there was anything Kurt had come to realize about the world he lived in it was that too often people were left alone without it. It was there that Kurt decided he could not leave those he loved helpless, that as Blaine had been his solace once he would now help him see why they needed to be Lina’s; because he believed it to be right and because he believed it to be the only thing that wouldn’t hurt Blaine more in the long run.

Most simply it was because Kurt loved. And if there was anyone in the world who should fight for Blaine, it was probably the man that loved him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Okay team. First I want to thank you whole heartadly for your reviews and your Kudos. You keep me going! Secondly I wanted to drop in here at the end to prepare you for the next chapter which will be in two parts. The format will be interesting, and potentially confusing. The first part will focus entirely on Kurt & Blaine's week long expedition (you didn't think it would be dull with our boys running around in the wild under the waxing moon did you?) and the second on events that occur in other places during the same week. Hopefully I'll do my job right and your heads wont be exploding by the end. And just a warning in advance Chapter 19 (part 2) is going to be heavily M centric which means heavily violent and I'd advise paying keen attention to the warnings here on out.


	20. Chapter 19- The Merlin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I ended up making a lot of structural changes to this chapter because it just wasn't coming together the way I'd like. Both sides of this chapter are almost entirely about Kurt and Blaine and what happens to them on expedition. What's happening in the outside world will be revealed later.The same warnings apply for all future chapters which is simply to mind them.They're there for a reason.

_The First Night_

They dug the den fifty feet or so from the lake, near the top of an incline, the entrance tucked between a pair of jutting stones and concealed by plenty of foliage. They all took turns with the digging, trading off between those who dug, those who patrolled their perimeter and those who guarded the cubs too young to help.

Clara and a girl named Mai were his digging partners and Kurt got to know them quite well by the time Wes ordered a switch. Mai was a tan and grey ball of cheerfulness and chatter. She spoke eagerly of her home in Egypt as well as her desire to return to it and Kurt was fascinated by how different she was from the other wolves he’d met. She was smaller and finer boned than even Clara who was reputedly petite for her age. Her features were fox-like and something was almost feline to the curve of her ears (something that she assured him was normal for African wolves).

Clara was shyer and not as quick to offer conversation as Mai but she answered Kurt’s inquiries about Ireland happily and the more comfortable she became the more talkative she got. She only truly came alive however when it was time for them to hunt with Blaine. At first Kurt thought it was because of the moon. Digging underground he hadn’t really noticed it but when they were out under a clear night sky, the moon a bright crescent overhead, Kurt couldn’t help but feel like he’d been cooped up for too long. Odd considering how exhausted he’d been hours earlier after a full day of walking.

Normally hunting parties hunted to feed the entire group, but with their numbers so small and so many of them untrained, Blaine was taking them out in small groups to catch smaller game. It was a good hunting lesson and allowed him to leave as many of the experienced fighters as he could to guard the group until the den was finished.

Kurt had been on short hunts with Blaine before so he knew what signals to watch for and how to drive prey into a waiting trap. He’d yet to make a kill of his own; truthfully it made his stomach queasy imagining crushing a life between his jaws and he wasn’t sure he could get over that squeamishness when the moment called for it.

In the end the moon was its own sort of blessing, for it was hard for Kurt to maintain any sort of nerves while under it. Blaine let them play first, a reward for a hard day’s work, and Kurt enjoyed himself more than he’d ever thought he possibly could out in nature. There was a constant flow of energy in his limbs giving him a pleasant buzz he usually only achieved with alcohol. It was similar to how he’d felt at the beginning of last month but also different. Now there was none of the nuisance of feeling like his skin was too tight or his heart ready to burst in his chest.

Now he was speed and grace, racing through the trees like a silver shadow, now he knew that happiness could be achieved in the warm press of another body against his, in the affection and warmth of play as the four of them wrestled and chased each other. 

It was during their play that he realized that he was not alone in his affections for their alpha and it wasn’t just the moon that had brought Clara out of her shell. It was impressive actually how canny the shy beta female could be when she had her eye on a goal. She stayed out of their reaches, battling furiously to stay off her back when Kurt chased her into Mai’s path, holding out to be the last wolf standing. In reality they all knew that Blaine was the strongest and therefore the one to truly avoid out of the others, but this was play and not a real melee for dominance so Blaine allowed the two younger wolves to occasionally get the drop on him before he ended the fight.

He pinned Clara about the same time Kurt shook Mai’s grasping jaws off his scruff and got a hold on her shoulder. Before she could catch her footing he’d driven her to the ground. He was quick to throw his weight over her and she tried once or twice to force him off with her hind legs but gave up when she realized the futility of it, finally tucking her tail in and lowering her ears with an exhausted and plaintive whine.

_“You win.”_ She conceded and Kurt was amused when she hastily added, _“But it’s only because you’re bigger. I almost had you back there.”_ He licked over her muzzle and Mai’s laughter filled his thoughts. It was wonderful being close to her like this, feeling her so intimately, feeling how little bubbles of happiness burst inside them both at the brilliance that was _play_ ; but he stilled when his nose picked up a familiar and yet displeasing scent.

Blaine was licking over Clara in a similarly affectionate fashion and she was laughing much as Mai was. It should have been pleasing. It should have been wonderful because this was pack and pack meant family but Clara no longer smelled like family. The young she-wolf smelled like want and submission and Kurt couldn’t help the way that smell burned through his blood or the way his nose twitched with interest. He knew now for a fact that Allie had spoken true when she taught them that submissive pheromones weren’t gender specific; because he was very much uninterested in taking a twelve year old female to mate, but everything that was dominant within him was very interested in the way she smelled.

And almost as quickly as he realized what the scent Clara was giving off meant, Kurt’s thoughts abandoned Mai completely and focused entirely on Blaine. The low growl that rumbled out of his throat was the only warning he gave before he tackled the black wolf. Blaine yelped, taken off guard and had to fight desperately to keep his footing as Kurt got a grip on his fur and used it to try and force him downwards. The grey wolf couldn’t help the surge of pride he felt. It served Blaine right, forgetting there was one other on the playing field as yet undominated and it would give him a vicious sort of satisfaction now if Kurt managed to pin Blaine because he’d been distracted by the wiles of a hormonal preteen _girl_ , for Christ’s sake.

He was a lot less gentle with Blaine than he’d been with Mai or Clara on account of his strength and age, and not at all because Blaine was covered in Clara’s cloyingly sweet scent and Kurt found the smell of it irritating the longer it was in his nose. If he grappled harder for a hold on Blaine and fought harder to avoid the alpha’s jaws as Blaine fought right back, it was only because in that moment he was truly alive in a way he hadn’t been with the girls. With them he was conscious of his greater strength and his larger size at all times, with Blaine there was nothing but challenge and it was exhilarating.

Kurt went to ground first, unable to avoid Blaine’s jaws when the black wolf forced him up against a tree and got a solid grasp on his throat, pulling Kurt downward and forcing him to follow if he didn’t want those teeth to really start to hurt.

Blaine was laughing at him, his amusement holding too much smugness to sit well with Kurt. Blaine’s weight over him was somehow both welcome and threatening and Kurt kept his legs stiff, pushing with all his strength as he lunged for Blaine’s exposed throat. It forced the alpha to lower his head and lean to the side, giving Kurt all the advantage he needed to push Blaine’s greater weight off his chest and wriggle out from under him, snarling and snapping the whole way. Blaine lunged for his shoulder but Kurt anticipated the move and twisted out of the way and back around to rake his claws across Blaine’s side in a warning that had the black wolf putting a respectful distance between them.

They faced off, both of them with teeth bared in aggression that would probably have had someone who didn’t know better convinced that they were locked in a vicious battle to the death, but the energy flowing between them wasn’t heated at all by anger but by something caught inexplicably between savagery and joy. This was the thrill of being wild, this was living on a scale Kurt had never quite managed while human; it was wind against his face and blood coursing hard through his veins and living singularly in every second that ticked past.

Blaine was second to go down, Kurt taking a hint from him and crowding him back into a tree where he’d have less room to twist about. Mai cheered excitedly and it didn’t surprise Kurt at all that Clara’s encouraging cheers turned to groans when Blaine’s back hit the dirt. Blaine’s frustrated growl was something like music to his ears and though he’d only barely managed to stay on top Kurt couldn’t help rubbing it in when the alpha’s first attempt to throw Kurt’s weight off of him failed.

_“What’s the matter, not used to taking on someone who isn’t a twelve year old with a crush just aching to roll over for you?”_ He jibed between the two of them (because annoying as he might find her at present Kurt wasn’t interested in humiliating Clara). Blaine’s laughter burst new and bright between them and Kurt shivered when the larger wolf arched to rub their muzzles together. He was taken off guard by receiving a caress rather than the attack he’d expected, and something about Blaine willingly rubbing their scents together made Kurt’s belly tighten and his blood heat and before he knew it Kurt was rubbing back, licking at Blaine’s face and throat as his limbs all but liquefied.

It was infuriatingly easy and so obvious it should have been expected when Blaine kicked him off with his hind legs and lunged to grab him by the ear and pull. Yelping Kurt followed the pull down, tipping over onto his side. Blaine was standing over him in a blink and of course the best hope he had of getting back up was with his legs so Kurt had to roll on his back to brace them against Blaine’s ribs. As soon as he was belly up Blaine lunged for his neck this time and Kurt couldn’t help the startled whine that escaped when Blaine’s teeth scraped the skin at his throat. An electric pulse spread from the bite down to his belly. He’d have said his whole body went pliant against his will if he hadn’t been keenly aware of how hard he was and how the smell of his own submission was clinging to them both.

He couldn’t truly bring himself to be upset, though he struggled weakly, when Blaine began licking over his face, satisfaction oozing out over the bond and the feel of his heart vibrating against Kurt’s ribcage like a drumbeat. Kurt couldn’t have moved even had he wanted to try.

_“That was a dirty move, Anderson.”_ He grumbled and Blaine’s laughter mingled pleasantly with the thunder of their hearts.

_“You don’t need to be jealous you know.”_

_“I am not jealous!”_

_“Right because tickle fights with twelve year olds just annoy you that bad.”_

_“First off you were licking said twelve year old—”_

_“Essentially a tickle fight.”_

_“—and secondly,”_ Kurt continued like he hadn’t been interrupted, _“don’t act like you’ve got a plugged nose. Do you normally make a habit out of having tickle fights with horny teenage girls? Why are you laughing?”_

_“So you’re not jealous?”_

_“As threatening to my self-esteem as most little girls are, I think I’m good.”_

Blaine laughed again and they bathed each other in licks. Kurt was warm, Blaine was close, and the alpha no longer smelled like anything but him. Kurt was satisfied with that.

-*-

_Columbus_

Sam didn’t know where he was when he woke or how long he’d been unconscious. It was still twilight but something in his gut told him that some time had passed since he’d passed out. For starters he’d been bleeding from several very deep gouges and the blood had already congealed and dried over his skin. He’d never been to school but even he knew that took time. He was disoriented when he tried to stand, his vision swimming and his muscles screaming with pain as his wounds reopened with the stretch and shift of his skin. He hissed and clutching his side, trying vainly to stem the steady trickle of blood out the gashes the vampires’ claws had left.

That was when the memory of the attack slowly came back to him. He’d fought the leach who’d been stalking the city but it hadn’t been much of a fight. He’d never met a vampire that strong and there hadn’t been a moment of the battle where he hadn’t gotten the sense that the vampire was just toying with him. Sam had no doubt the vamp was a Master and he also knew he was only alive because the vampire had wanted him that way. The guy had handed him his ass and then gleefully told him he’d give him one more life, like they were playing a video game, and told Sam he had till he counted to fifty to run. Sam had run for his life. He’d shifted and busted in a church window when he’d spotted it because everyone knew vampires couldn’t enter them. Nobody knew why, something to do with unholy blood. It was part of the reason the Church thought sub-humans were all demons. Lycan’s could enter churches just fine and Sam had collapsed in the sanctuary and cried.

Shifting had been torture he remembered now. It usually was when you were injured, but shifting itself was usually enough to fix injures. When the body realigned it did it to perfection unless something like wizard magic or vampire venom prevented it. Sam had never been struck by a leach before but his parent’s had warned him that a vampire’s strike was venomous and would only heal when the toxins were flushed out of the body. So Sam had lain there, bleeding all over the church floor, unable to heal himself with anything but time and hoping he didn’t bleed out before then.

That’s where he was he realized as he began to look around. He was still in the church. Not in the sanctuary anymore but somewhere in the church he was pretty sure because only churches had stained windows right? It was weird though because it looked like he was in somebody’s bedroom, though it could also be an office because there was a work desk in the corner with a computer and what looked like a library behind a door around the corner where he expected to see a bathroom. In the middle of the room there was a gigantic stone fire place and it was lit, which was incredibly weird for summer. Sam’s eyes widened when his vision cleared enough for him to put together that the hulking black shape in the creepy blue fire was actually a cauldron.

He must be in a druid’s temple he thought. He didn’t know much about wizards or their gods, if they even had gods, but his dad used to joke that every species had its religious eccentrics. Druids were as close to that as wizard’s got. He was surprised that other than the stone interior and the giant cauldron the temple didn’t look much different than any human church he’d ever been in. But then again it probably shouldn’t. Not if the wizard was trying to keep a low profile. It was true Humans liked wizards better than any other subhuman but that didn’t mean they could afford to be reckless.

There was a funny taste in Sam’s mouth. He was sure the wizard had given him something, which would explain why he hadn’t yet bled to death despite the severity of his injuries. He fell back against the bed weak with gratitude for his luck. Had it been a human church he’d been found in he’d probably be dead or worse, in the hands of human doctors. They wouldn’t have been able to help him but they’d have been able to tell he wasn’t human and Sam wouldn’t have given it an hour till he was shipped off to some “specialist” and never heard from again.

Whoever the wizard was he’d undoubtedly saved his life.

As if called by Sam’s thoughts of him, at that moment the door opened and a man with swept inside with a dramatic fluttering of robes. Like _legit_ robes, Sam knew because he was gawking at the whispery thin cloak the man wore, and the way it floated around him like silk. The wizard was also wearing a pair of black yoga pants and a tight exercise shirt of the same color. The only real color on him was a bold popping red sash tied around his waist that for some reason Sam couldn’t take his eyes off once he spotted it. Something about the shimmering material was mesmerizing, not to mention baffling. Weren’t druids supposed to be old dudes with beards and pipes?

“Excellent. You’re alive,” the wizard exclaimed, shutting the door with a snap. “You’re very lucky you know. I’ve been out of town and I only just returned two days ago. Had I not been here, why the poison in your frail imperfect body would have seen to your demise. As it is you’re bleeding all over my afghan again so I’ll have to ask you not to be stupid and quit moving. I’ll have to retreat your wounds and I’ve only so much yarrow left in my stores.”

“Who are you?” Sam asked and the wizard flashed him a winning smile full of teeth.

“Jesse St. James.” He announced like he was Darth Vader with big news for Luke Skywalker. “The greatest wizard that ever lived, banished to this nowhere city to practice rudimentary magic by men who fear greatness.”

“Okay.” Sam blinked up at him. Because really, what did you say to that? Jesse sneered as if Sam’s lack of understanding was only to be expected. He walked to the fireplace and reached on the mantle for a glass bowl and pulled a large wooden ladle from the row of utensils that hung from a bar just below it. Sam watched blearily as Jesse spooned a bright green concoction into the bowl and left the ladle within the cauldron. The brunet pressed his face close to the bowl and breathed in the rising steam and grinned secretively.

“Medicine time,” he said crossing the room over to Sam. “This will thicken your blood, keep the bleeding to a minimum. It will also help your body flush out the rest of the toxin, though you may be uncomfortably sweaty.” Jesse sniffed at that, eyeing what he could see of Sam’s naked body under the blanket with distaste.

Sam eyed the bowl Jesse extended towards him with suspicion. He hadn’t survived this long as a stray by just drinking any old potion a stranger handed to him.

“Can’t you just wave a wand or something?” He croaked out of his dry throat and Jesse glared down at him.

“Contrary to what you might think, _dog_ , this isn’t Harry Potter. Magic is complex and varied. Only certain types can be channeled through an object and healing magic is not one of them. Healing magic is all about the body. It either happens there or not at all. Drink the potion.”

Sam took the bowl, realizing he didn’t have much of a choice. He couldn’t get up and refusing wouldn’t do him much good when he was trapped with someone who could charm him into doing it anyway. He raised the bowl to his lips and took a tentative sip. He started in surprise at how cool it was, almost ice cold, despite the steam that was still rising from it. He swallowed and a numbing sensation followed it the whole way down. The taste wasn’t bad either. It was hard to taste it anything at all once it numbed his tongue.

“Thank you,” he grunted, frowning at gurgled he sounded with a laden tongue.

“He thanks me,” Jesse scoffed to the ceiling and Sam didn’t have any idea who he thought he was talking to, maybe God or something. “As if I act out of mercy. As if it were fate that drove him here.”

“Are you okay? You’re not… crazy… are you?” Sam asked hesitantly because the wizard was really beginning to weird him out and that was bad because he couldn’t even get up to fight.

“Crazy?!” Jesse shouted, leaping off the bed and Sam startled so bad he almost dropped the potion. The wizard started laughing mirthlessly; more like a cackle and Sam could only stare as he threw his head back and then flopped forward as the man’s laughter became a chilling sort of wail. The cry quieted when he’d run out of breath. Jesse stood with his back to Sam, his shoulders rising and falling in quick succession as he gulped for air.

Definitely crazy Sam decided.

“They say my uncle was mad, Mr. Evans.” Fear began to prick at him at Jesse’s whisper. The wizard knew his name… the vampire had known it too. Jesse turned back to him and Sam’s heart leapt into his throat when he saw the way the color had begun to leak from his iris. Blood red veins showing through the milky brown making them appear bloodied.

“I am not crazy, just cursed.” Jesse tilted his head then and lifted his long brown hair. The movement revealed two evenly spaced puncture wounds surrounded by a red patch of skin on his neck. A vampire bite Sam realized in horror. Jesse let his hair fall back into place. “Everything I have worked for is in ruins and now even my person is diseased.”

“What do you want from me?” Sam choked out as Jesse advanced on him. His heart only pounded harder when he realized he could no longer mover at all, the potion having frozen him in place.

“To heal you of course.” Jesse ran a hand over his brow in an almost motherly gesture. Crooning softly, “You are my master’s messenger aren’t you?”

“No,” Sam cried feeling the hot prick of tears slide down his frozen cheeks and Jesse stared sadly down at him.

“I don’t get much enjoyment out of this,” the brunette murmured. “But I’m fighting for my life here and you know what they say. Better you than me.”

-*-

_Kentucky_

After play they hunted. During that first hunt Kurt did expertly. He followed the direction of Blaine’s movements and the scents he released as part of a seamless unit, the four of them moving swiftly and simultaneously into strategic formations that were their own kind of beautiful. He got caught up in the feel of the wind and the earth beneath his paws so that when Mai drove the white tailed doe towards Blaine he felt the anticipation of the kill deep in his teeth. His mouth had watered when Blaine sprung out of the doe’s last avenue of escape, Kurt and the girls closing the gap. The doe had nowhere to go and Blaine made the kill look easy.

Blaine ate first because he’d made the kill and more importantly he was Alpha. He tore through the choicest meat and Kurt and the girls waited impatiently, hunger rolling through their bellies. When Blaine looked over at him and nudged the carcass with his snout Kurt didn’t understand at first, but when the alpha tore a healthy string of flesh and muscle loose and laid it at Kurt’s paws he began to understand. His slight hesitance encouraged Mai and Clara who were too tempted by the sight and smell of fresh meat so close not to at least attempt to steal a bite. Blaine warned them off with a growl and Kurt hesitated no longer, accepting the gift and the honor that came with it gratefully.

-*-

The cubs slept in the den piled together in a pile the first night. Lina and Emma slept at the opposite entrances to prevent any of the young leaving in the middle of the night and any threat from the outside slipping in. The other adults and their protégés (including Kurt) slept outside alternating turns on patrol.

That first night they traded stories of hunts and Chandler admitted that the proudest he had ever felt was after making his first kill. He and Blaine were sure that Kurt would make his before the week was out and Kurt hoped he didn’t disappoint them. Chandler told the story about how he’d tracked his first rabbit around Dalton all evening the previous summer, after Kitty had gone on for a week unchecked about how she thought submissives should keep back and let the alphas do the real hunting. He’d missed his evening training sessions and neglected his duties but even getting punished hadn’t been able to dim his pride. 

Blaine told a funny story about taking down a wild turkey whose nest he’d accidently stumbled upon when he was eleven. They all laughed when he admitted he’d slain the animal more out of fear for his life than any bravery or skill he might have had as a hunter.

When Chandler asked Adam what his first kill had been the mood rapidly fell. Adam and Blaine shared a long look in silence, their eyes glowing brightly in the dark. Heaviness settled over the four of them so strongly that even Chandler knew better than to press for more when Adam simply said, “A wolf” and left it at that.

Kurt thought about the fact that Chandler’s first kill had been a rabbit at the age of sixteen and how at sixteen Blaine, Adam alongside him, had already killed to claim a pack. He tried not to feel guilty about the desperate hope he had that his would happen there in the forest on his own terms and not out there in some dark corner of the future fighting for his life.

Wes and Jeff appeared a short time after that and Adam and Chandler took the next patrol. Kurt thought Blaine might have had something to do with the timeliness of it.

He slept curled against Blaine’s side, Blaine promising to wake him when it was his turn for them to patrol.

_*_

_The Second Day_

Kurt woke feeling like Blaine needed him. The alpha was no longer by his side but his distress was eas enough to follow. Kurt hung back when he saw that Blaine was safe and sound, pacing the edge of the lake with Wes watching on. They were arguing about something he could tell and Kurt could only watch helplessly on. Once again he was met with the reality that for all that he knew Blaine needed him, he had no real right to walk over there and interrupt what was clearly a private matter between the pack Alpha and his Beta.

He was not the one responsible for easing Blaine’s distress or asking him what had him in such turmoil, especially if it was pack related, Wes was. But a little voice in Kurt’s head insisted that Wes couldn’t know Blaine like he did. No matter how good a friend was he would never get as close to Blaine as his mate would. He simply couldn't help the way Kurt knew he could and that was frustrating in the extreme.

He walked back to the den to lay with Lina, attempting to clear his head. He wasn’t mating with Blaine for very good reasons. He should remember that.

Blaine came back and Kurt could still feel the tension rolling off him but he did not approach Kurt and his sole attempt to inquire about it was gently but firmly shut down. So Kurt let it go, but that didn’t stop the ache inside. Wes led a small hunting party and they brought back game for breakfast. Blaine offered him food again and it went a long way towards soothing the little ball of ache in his chest that he couldn’t seem to be rid of. As he was eating Kurt thought of Lina who had been subdued since her shocking revelation the day before. He decided to bring the she-wolf a portion of the flank, worried that she wouldn’t get enough to eat.

She did not seem unhappy, though she remained withdrawn for the rest of the day. She did not speak, even within her own thoughts, but the nuzzle of her cheek against his was enough for Kurt to know that he was thanked. The cubs, especially Benito, worried about her but Emma explained to them that there was a special place inside their minds where some submissives liked to go when they were overwhelmed. Kurt knew it to be a peaceful place because he could feel Lina’s contentment through the bond. She would come out of her sub space when she felt ready to face the world and he was determined to make it safe for her to do so.

He wanted to talk to Blaine but he was forced to wait because Blaine called them together before they’d even finished eating to begin their first combat drills.

Kurt was nervous but the first hour or so was pretty basic. They reviewed the different strike positions and the different defense stances, the best ways to get out from under an enemy, the most vulnerable parts to strike and the best ways to keep their vulnerable areas protected. 

Then Blaine divided the students up between Adam and Wes and sent them off for a more intensive lesson and when Jeff and Chandler each followed their respective alpha-master’s Kurt wasn’t sure where he was supposed to go for a moment.

_“You’re with me Kurt. We’ve got a lot to prepare you for.”_

By prepare Blaine meant hours of grueling challenges. It started with Emma drawing a line in the dirt and both of them standing on either side facing off. Then Emma, playing the part of officiator, howled the signal to begin and Kurt would find himself in the middle of a desperate fight to avoid being pinned. The fight wasn’t solely about getting one of them in a submissive position. It was a battle of wills at its core. To win Kurt had to force Blaine to accept his subservience to Kurt’s dominance, something he might willingly go to the death before doing. In the end how far a challenge went was up to its fighters. 

Most challenges didn’t end in death, for loss of life hit the pack as a whole and the life of each pack member was considered precious. A wolf knew that once they submitted to their challenger that was the end of whatever discord had brought them there. They’d had their fair chance to see their will done and they had either had the strength to see it through or hadn’t.

For Kurt the fight was all but certain to go to Flint, but Blaine reminded him that winning was not his aim. All Kurt had to do really was draw the fight out enough to make the point that if he, barely a month old, could hold his own against a seasoned alpha no one could accuse him of being weak.

That was going to be a whole lot harder than Kurt had anticipated if Flint fought anything like Blaine. He saw for truth the first time Blaine charged at him, plowing him off his feet and grabbing ahold of his neck with lightning quick speed and not a hint of gentleness, how Blaine had been playing with him the night before. He’d been so smug about pinning him then but that morning he learned the difference between battle and play and Blaine at battle was merciless.

-*-

_The Third Night_

He slept curled up with Chandler and Jeff, the three protégés nesting a ways off to lick their wounds in privacy, two full days of practice more than enough to have them wanting a little distance from their respective mentors.

_“I don’t know whether to be jealous that you’re being trained by the Alpha of the pack or to pity you because he’s training you.”_ Chandler thought at him as he licked the bite on Kurt’s foreleg clean of dirt Kurt had gotten in it shifting in his fitful sleep. Kurt’s pitiful whines had woken Chandler and Jeff was still absent on patrol with Wes.

_“I really hate him right now,”_ Kurt thought numbly to himself. He’d been trying not to think it all day, knowing all too well how intimately their bond ran and how such thoughts and feelings could make Blaine feel in return. It only made him angrier now to realize that even bloodied and driven to the brink all his stupid biology would let him do was think about _Blaine’s_ needs. He growled low, his eyes glowing hot as he glared at Blaine a few feet away, laying close to Adam and sleeping peacefully.

Or maybe not, because the growl hadn’t even finished leaving his throat when Blaine raised his big black head and stared at him, the amber of his eyes glowing like torch light in the darkness. Blaine said nothing. As he had for two days now the alpha kept his emotions behind a wall and there was nothing but cold emptiness for Kurt to pour his own emotions into.

He was tempted to do it, to unleash every bit of anger and resentment he felt and hope that even behind his walls it would burn Blaine like fire. Kurt just bared his teeth and turned away.

_“Hate’s a really strong word.”_ Chandler’s thoughts were gentle but they still poked at his conscience. “Adam got ahold of my tail earlier and I swear he was trying to rip it out of my ass. Then he had the audacity to laugh at me and go ‘Be aware of every limb, Chandler. EVERY limb’.” Kurt knew the teenager was trying to distract him from his anger but it worked just the same, something about hearing Chandler’s impression of an English accent (and an atrocious one at that) impossible not to find amusing. Chandler responded to the surge of amusement he felt come from Kurt with a wolfy grin and a lick across Kurt’s snout.

_“So I said I hated him, because my ass was on fire and not even for a good reason, and you know what he told me? He told me that it was fine if I hated him. He said I could hate him till I was old and ready to wander off, so long as I lived to be that old.”_ Chandler recounted as he returned to licking Kurt’s wounds. _“And I don’t know… when I think about it that way I guess he was only trying to love me. He doesn’t have to be alone you know. No one would judge him too terribly if he took me up on half the things I offer him, but he’s always exactly what I need him to be right now: my teacher, my mentor, the person who gives me the hardest time and the hardest truth whether I want to hear it or not. And this, us coming out here, our Alpha coming out here where anything could happen to him and anything could happen to the pack in his absence, that’s because bad things are about to happen. And I think if it scares Adam then this training has got to be worth it right?”_

Kurt would have sighed had he been able to. Chandler was only reminding him of what he already knew but maybe it was a reminder he needed. Despite the fact that he wasn’t mating with Blaine because of his fear that something could happen to him and doom Blaine along with him, the possibility of death looming up at him out of myths just seemed so unreal still. Maybe that was the problem.

_“I want to live a long time.”_ Chandler shared the thought. _“I want to have like ten blond cubs with my brain, his courage, both our good looks, and probably his accent too. Like I wouldn’t talk at all while they were in the womb so they’d come out thinking British you know? Though I don’t think he’d let me because cubs need to hear both their parents. I’ll probably have to start thinking British if I want AJ to sound like Adam. Do you ever just ask yourself what you want Kurt? I the cubs, I want Adam to insist I don’t know we’ll have a boy—but of course we will because I’ve already decided on AJ—and I want us to be together for all our firsts and do all the lasts we can together too. And then he and I, we’ll go to rest together. I know it’s more likely he’ll wander first because he’s like twice my age… but I still want to try.”_

Kurt was continually surprised by his young friend. Chandler might have been young but that didn’t mean he wasn’t wise in his own way. He was wiser sometimes than half the adults around him even. He’d reminded Kurt to look past the aches and pains of his body and the weight of exhaustion to see clearly. There was so much more than a challenge he’d have to face when they returned home and there was no guarantee that nothing would happen to him. There were never any guarantees… but maybe that shouldn’t stop him from reaching for the happiness he wanted.

_“You never know. You’re seventeen…”_ Kurt thought with a level of fondness he was sure had passed somewhere into love some time ago without his notice. _“Technically he’s not twice your age.”_

-*-

_Fourth Day_

Another day of drills, another day of agony, and Kurt tried to do better remembering that Blaine was only being as hard on him as he was because he needed to be; but it was hard not to resent the fact that Blaine didn’t seem to have a kind word to spare him, or even a kind thought.

_‘Again’_ he’d snap, not a single thought or emotion otherwise slipping past the barrier he kept firmly between their minds and Kurt would drag his exhausted body back to meet him at the challenge line.

Kurt was truly getting tired of hearing that. He was getting tired of a lot of things but chiefly Blaine. He wasn’t sure how many hours they’d been at it that day. After the first few they all had begun to blur together into one mass of sweat, pain, and blood. He knew only that the sun had begun to set a while ago and the others returned to draw a circle around them and watch, none of them daring to interrupt with so much as a cough. On and on they went until Kurt thought he’d collapse. Not that Blaine seemed to care. Kurt couldn’t tell that Blaine cared about anything, shut out as he was, and that was more and more painful for him as the hours ticked by; more so than any of his physical wounds. 

The emptiness ached and itched like an open wound. It hurt the way his mind was hungry for Blaine’s, like a belly cramped with hunger pains. His heart was always just a step out of sync having lost any sense rhythm. It raced and then it would stutter, slowing to painful sluggish beats. He called out to Blaine in his thoughts but Blaine was silent but for his ‘agains’ as if Kurt’s thoughts weren’t even reaching him.

But Blaine had to know. Blaine had to feel it too. Blaine had to _need_ him too. The thought that he might not, that Kurt might have imagined the depth of their bond in his head was driving him crazy.

He paid for his lack of focus when Blaine leapt on his back and all but tore his ear off wrestling him to the ground. Kurt didn’t resist the pull of gravity, falling to the dirt and tucking his tail in and refusing to move until Blaine accepted his signal of defeat. A rolling growl rumbled in the black wolf’s chest and for the first time in three days a crack appeared in the wall Blaine hid behind.

_“You’re not even trying anymore. Don’t you dare just curl up like a kicked puppy. Get up! You can’t just quit like you don’ have anything to fight for.”_ Blaine snarled and then snapped his powerful jaws so close to Kurt’s face he can feel the heat of his breath.

Something in Kurt snapped. Maybe it was a combination of the waxing moon, the mental/emotional stress of the last few days or his physical weariness or Blaine’s accusation that he was just simpy quitting—as if it hadn’t been three days of getting his ass kicked and his biology wasn’t going hay-wire because Blaine was _missing_ —but suddenly Kurt was gone and there was nothing left but the wolf and the wolf was rage.

He lunged at the alpha above him, driving him backward when the black wolf skittered back with a yelping bark of surprise to avoid his teeth. He feinted to the left side of the alpha and wasted no time diving to the right when the alpha twisted to avoid the bite.

He tore at fur and flesh with teeth and claws, his furious snarls downing out Blaine’s cries of pain. Blaine dropped onto his right side, momentum forcing Kurt to let go and before Kurt knew it Blaine was under him and tangled up in his legs, ripping and slashing with his claws and his jaws snapping at bone. He had to leap up and over him to get out of his reach and just like that Blaine was on his feet with the advantage again. He drove Kurt in a circle, carefully avoiding each of his charges; but there was a fire burning in Kurt now. When he realized that Blaine was backing him up against a tree he abandoned caution and charged at him and the two crashed into each other.

For a minute that was somehow both moving in slow motion and faster than lightening they were a furiously writhing mass of twisting limbs and vicious bites. Kurt held nothing back. He was the wolf and the wolf felt nothing at all but rage, pain, and the desperate fight for survival. Blaine was not a friend, not a mate, just a danger and Kurt had to kill or be killed. Hunter and prey: in that moment that was all they were to each other; and that was the moment the wall splintered. When it finally shattered Kurt was swept up in by a tidal wave of emotion so strong it drove the fight right out of him and left nothing but devastation in its wake.

They howled almost in the same breath, sharing the same intense agony where they’d shared nothing for hours. And then Wes and the other adults whimpered and whined, the pain that Blaine felt reverberating through them and the rest of the pack miles away creating one continuous loop. It was nothing but panic and pain, white hot and lacerating them both—he thought he heard Blaine’s voice sobbing his name but Kurt was being pulled down a dark tunnel. He knew nothing more after that. They went still in the same moment, their minds going blank and their bodies slack as they lay limp and broken.

Though he never heard it Chandler was screaming Kurt’s name, Adam holding him back by a firm grip on his scruff.

_“Kurt! Oh my god he’s dead. They’re dead oh my god oh my god.”_ Chandler screamed and Clara started to howl, her mournful cries battering their senses until one by one the younger cubs joined her. Emma and Lina began ushering them all into the den before Wes could even snap the order.

Wes trotted up to Kurt and Blaine’s fallen forms, whimpering softly as he nudged them both, relief almost making him dizzy when he realized they were both still breathing.

_“What happened?”_ Jeff asked and Wes thought it had been a long time since he’d heard his protégé sound so young.

_“They’re dead!”_ Chandler’s mind screamed in answer. _“They killed each other and we just sat here and watched!”_

_“Chandler!”_ Adam shook him back and forth with a snarl and the smaller wolf whined and went slack in his grip. Adam’s thoughts were far more gentle once the teen had stopped screaming. _“They’re not dead, Love, just unconscious. Alright?”_

_“But what was that?!”_ Jeff demanded again, firmer this time. _“Why did that happen?”_

“Because, Mr. Sterling, to hurt one’s mate is to hurt one’s self.” A polished voice said unexpectedly from the mouth of the den and the four lycans turned with shocked growls to find a man standing in what had once been the entrance to their den. It now looked more like the mouth of a cave. Magic they all assumed, for this was a man they knew and they knew him to be a wizard. Ian walked toward the place where Blaine and Kurt lay crumpled on top of each other, his sandaled feet crunching obscenely on the forest floor, as if mocking them all for not hearing his approach.

Ian knelt beside the fallen pair and sighed, running a hand affectionately over Blaine’s black pelt and to their amazement their Alpha’s wolf skin vanished as if Ian’s hand had wiped it away, leaving Blaine naked on the forest floor. He did the same to Kurt a moment later and regarded them both for a long moment. Then, to the horror of them all, Blaine’s skin began to split and bleed, as if an invisible blade had taken to it. Ian raised a hand when they would of rushed to him.

“How long?” The Merlin asked without turning around, a bite to his tone that was truly foreboding and they all looked at each other. Wes was the one who drummed up the courage to reply.

_“Three days.”_

“And I suppose you lot just thought you’d see how it went?” Ian demanded and Wes flinched. Ian’s eyes narrowed as he went on. “I have come to expect better from you Wesley. Or have you become so lax as his Beta that you’ve already handed over the reins to a boy untried and unbitten?”

They all felt the surge of shame in Wes and it was confirmation enough.

_“I offered to do it for him Merlin. He was insistent.”_

“Fool boy,” Ian muttered. Glowering the old man rose to his feet, flicking his hand in an irritated manner and Kurt and Blaine’s bodies levitating behind him.

“Go wait with the others,” he ordered sharply. “I will see to them and then we shall have words.”

~*~*~

_Sixth Day_

When Kurt woke he could not be sure at first whether he was truly awake or still in the land of dreams, for gone was the forest and the open sky. All around him there was the glitter of blue light and the quiet sound of water trickling down stone. He realized he was in a cave after a moment and the unfamiliarity of his surroundings as well as the discovery of his own nakedness made his heart pound with fear. He could smell another close and then hear the soft sound of breathing. He kept himself still as he silently assessed the danger.

The light was coming from a solitary flame held in the open palm of a man who sat upon a throne of stalagmite. Though the man’s hair was white and his face heavily wrinkled there was no frailty to his posture, a glimmer of mischief and youthfulness in the gleam of his eye as he regarded the flame he held aloft in his palm. It did not appear to burn, though Kurt felt the heat it generated creeping over him, driving away the chill and damp of the cave.

There were amethyst crystals growing within the stalactite that hung low from the ceiling and also some jutting from the old man’s seat upon the stalagmite. The light danced against the surface of the gems and bathed the cave in a brilliant kaleidoscope. There was something beguiling about the beauty of the amethyst, an inexplicable sense of peace settling over Kurt as he realized he was in the presence of a magic far beyond himself. Strangely it did not inspire fear.

He felt somehow that he knew the old man, though he could not recall his name and the struggle to recall it made his brain itch. He curled his fists in frustration. He did not know this man did he? He’d remember someone who looked like that yet he was sure somehow that he did. But who was he?

The old man looked up then, as if Kurt had spoken and his lips twitched in a smile. If he had heard Kurt’s thoughts he gave no sign of it, nor did he acknowledge Kurt’s return to consciousness. He blew instead on the flame in his palm and watched it flicker. Kurt’s eyes were drawn to watch the mesmerizing dance of flames, widening in fascination as the shadows on the walls took the shape of a man and a woman and whirled about like dancers on a stage. In an aged baritone the man began to sing and Kurt just lay and watched him, feeling suddenly as if he’d been dropped into one of Finn’s fantasy movies.

_King Arthur's knights they filled the table round,_  
Save for one who stood before them.  
For once without a weapon,  
For once he stood in shame.  
The trial's charge was treason,  
And betrayal of an oath.  
And should his guilt be proven,  
Death would fall on traitors both.  
The knights would counsel Arthur's hard decision 

When Kurt realized the song the old man sang was a bards tale, a tale about Arthur and his Knights he knew without a doubt who the old man was.

“Merlin,” his voice was raspy with disuse but it echoed strongly within the cave. The old man’s smile broadened but he did not acknowledge the title.

“Lancelot,” he declared to Kurt’s bemusement. Nodding to the dancing shadows on the cave wall Ian explained, “It is a bard’s tale about the day he was tried for his affair with the Queen. I knew him you know…” Ian trailed off, becoming lost in his own thoughts. Kurt watched the spectacle with wonder. He’d grown up on stories of Lancelot and the rest of King Arthur’s Knights and he had heard Blaine’s stories about them but even then there had been something so mythical about them, so far removed from his reality. But in Ian’s eyes was the reality of grief and the heaviness of his memories, and Kurt realized that the man sitting above him had known Lancelot and Arthur as people, as friends that had come and then gone. It made him sad to think of it as Ian began to sing again.

_As Arthur wept, he called the wrath of Heaven_  
On the lovers who'd betrayed him.  
On the knight he had called 'brother'  
Thought worthy of his trust.  
On the queen who'd hid deception,  
Yet could say she loved him still.  
For lost innocence and beauty,  
And injustice for their guilt.  
King Arthur knew the only price for treason. 

_And Lancelot, his head held high said,_  
"I'll die in love with Guinevere.  
I'd die for love." 

The flame in the Merlin’s hand steadied and the figures of Lancelot and Guinevere were spun away from each other and before they blended with the dark corners and were no more, Kurt thought he saw them reach for each other and his chest ached as if a heavy stone had been set upon it.

“Lancelot was always a fool for love,” Ian reminisced, bitterness warring with something strangely close to pride in his voice. “The bravest of all the knights of the circle, the quickest to defend their oaths of chivalry, a champion warrior and Arthur’s most trusted friend. His face alone had young women in all seven lands throwing themselves at his feet. He could have claimed any one of them, and like a perfect fool he fell for the one man he couldn’t have.”

Kurt slowly raised himself to sitting, blinking in confusion as Ian’s words sank in and he recalled the shadows on the wall. “Man?” He asked, sure he hadn’t heard correctly and Ian’s lips twisted in a tired smile.

“Gwyn, son of Morgan Mwynfawr, King of Gwent. King Morgan had agreed to swear fealty to Arthur and adopt the laws and practices of Camelot for Arthurs help defeating his enemy to the west, the kingdom of Glywysing. I did not trust Morgan’s sincerity, for he had been known to go back on his word. I wanted to bind him to Arthur in blood for I had foreseen that Arthur’s queen would come from his house and bring greatness to Arthur and Camelot. Arthur was young still, but untempered and restless. The years without a mate had begun to take their toll and I wanted to see him mated and settled before… before he could bring ruin to himself and all our carefully laid plans.

“Arthur had met a woman named Morgana and the two had grown attached. I discouraged the union for reasons that all seemed very important at the time. Of course Arthur’s queen had to be accepted by the people. She had to keep Arthur’s lineage and abilities a secret and be a boon to him and his house. Morgana, much as I loved her, was simply unsuitable. She was a bastard, a product of my weak flesh and my own battle with loneliness. I should have understood it better in Arthur. I looked to the future and I saw Arthur’s bride come from the royal blood of Gwent and I consoled myself that the love budding between Arthur and my daughter was doomed to fail whether I separated them or not. I convinced Arthur it was better to deny her then, than to wait for their feelings to deepen. _My_ daughter never forgave me and Morgan’s daughter Guinevere opposed the marriage as strongly, but her father gave her little choice.

“I began to doubt my vision when word came the girl was ill, weakened by depression and a frail constitution. I worried she would not be strong enough for conversion and about Arthur’s happiness with a woman who would shake and moan and fear the wolf. As it happened, I needn’t have worried. Morgan’s daughter never stepped foot in Camelot.” At Kurt’s face filled with confusion Ian chuckled. “Aye. The woman the world remembers as Guinevere was actually her brother, Gwyn. He was often called ‘the fair’ because his beauty rivaled his sisters. With his hair grown out the two could be mistaken for twins.” Ian laughed at the memory and Kurt’s eyes rounded with shock. That was… different. It wasn’t every day Merlin sat you down and told you a mythical queen had actually been of the drag variety. Ian’s chuckles bloomed into full bellied laughter and Kurt wondered again if he could hear his thoughts.

“Those imps were the only two I ever knew who so completely managed to pull the wool over my eyes. Guinevere faked her sickness to buy Gywn time to grow his hair out and arrange plans to run away with her stable boy lover. Gwyn dressed up in his sister’s skirts and Guinevere cut off her long lochs and donned his trousers. It wasn’t until the damn wedding night when we knew what they’d done and by then… well, Arthur was impressed with the boy. He did not want him to hang for his crime so no one but the Circle ever knew that his queen wasn’t a female.”

Ian’s giggles quieted. Slowly the smile on his face faded. The old man’s voice sounded stretched, weary, when he finally spoke again. “Gwyn was everything my visions promised. Good in heart, fiercely loyal to those he loved, and easily converted. He took to wolf spirit like he’d been born for it and he and Arthur grew to love each other in their own way. The kingdom grew and flourished under their rule.” _But_ hung heavy in the air. Kurt thought again of the bard’s song.

“But a bite does not a mate make,” he guessed and Ian winced.

“Aye. Though I refused to see it until it was far too late Gwyn and Arthur were not true mates. Arthur’s heart was given to another. All I had done was chain him to his duty and without giving the poor boy any idea of what he was getting into I had chained Gwyn to it as well. I saw the way Lancelot looked at Arthur’s mate, and the way his mate looked at his favored knight in return, and I knew then that in binding Gwyn to Arthur I had made it impossible for him to find true love… but,” Ian heaved a heavy sigh and then he straightened his spine and shifted his gaze from the roof to stare right at Kurt, as if he could see right through his skin.

“But I have lived a long time Kurt and I have seen men love and love again for what has felt like eons. I thought then what I know still to be true now. The line between love and selfishness is thin, and one is not the other. The kingdom Arthur built, along with the peace and prosperity he brought to all those he ruled, crumbled because of the selfishness of lovers. In the end Arthur was just a man like any other. He was too weak to deny himself for the greater good. He betrayed his queen and his queen betrayed him in turn. Camelot was thrown into war and Arthur lived only long enough to put an end to it and meet the eyes of his son for the first time as he lay dying.

“I cursed him, Kurt. I cursed him, his love, his pride, the blasted code of ethics that made it treason for a Queen to betray her King and nothing for a King to do the same. I cursed my blasted duty and I cursed myself, for I had failed them all. I had forgotten that Arthur was human, that _I_ was human and that I too could fail. Someone I loved warned me once that I would and I did not heed her. They were my children and I failed to preserve them. When I tried to return Arthur’s sword to my lady, she refused it. She told me the King only sleeps. They all only sleep. Arthur and the Circle will govern the seven lands again in our world’s greatest time of need, and I have watched for the signs of their coming for centuries. That time is here but victory is never certain. Victory will only be had if it is fought for.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Kurt asked when Ian finally fell silent. Why was Ian here now? Why had Kurt woken here alone without Blaine and what was Ian’s purpose sharing these memories with him?

“Damage control.” Ian answered shortly. “Blaine has harmed your bond and you should understand why. As your mate he could not ask the others to harm you. He would not have been able to stomach it, and he considered it his duty to—”

“His duty?” Kurt couldn’t help but interject incredulously, Ian’s words bringing back the emotions of the last three days and fracturing the calm he’d felt since waking under the soothing glow of the stones. “He couldn’t stomach letting Wes or Adam hurt me but he’s perfectly capable of beating me up for three days and ignoring me like it doesn’t mean anything to him?”

“Capable yes, perfectly no” Ian responded as calmly as he had before, as if the amethyst stones all around them weren’t beginning to pulse, glowing brighter in tandem with the surge of emotion in the room. “In the end he couldn’t keep you out. You are his in spirit, bite or no. You see my problem don’t you Mr. Hummel? For the first time in centuries the stars are in their proper houses for the return of Arthur, which means Arthur is either already here or he will come of Blaine’s line. Right on schedule the dear boy finds a mate. A mate who might as well be a child for all the good he’ll do him. Blaine never did learn to think before he leaped and now the fool is tied to you. Arthur’s line will die with an idiot boy who—”

“Hold on!” Kurt couldn’t help but snap. No Blaine wasn’t his favorite person at the moment but he couldn’t believe the gall Ian had, oldest wizard living alive or not, talking that way about Blaine after everything he’d just admitted to doing to people he claimed to have loved and who had trusted him.

“Blaine didn’t ask for any of this. You and your ‘Lady ’ put this on him just because he had the audacity to be born.” Kurt scrambled to his feet, brushing mud and dirt off his backside as he tried not to growl at the old man. “And you know what,” he panted, swatting at a dried patch of grime on his ass. “I keep hearing how I’m sure to die at the hand of vampires any day now so I’d say it wasn’t unnecessary at all to get me used to feeling like I could kill something. Success! I feel like strangling all of you. But I love him, and if this is how you really feel about him you can just stay the hell away! He doesn’t need one more person making him feel guilty for doing his best against impossible odds.” To Kurt’s irritation Ian barked a laugh and waved his words away.

“Many things Blaine has done. His best is not among them.”

“I don’t _believe_ you.” Kurt seethed at him. “What more could he possibly do for you?!”

“His duty! Mr. Hummel. He has a responsibility to ensure the continuation of his line and not only has he ignored that to pander to the illusion that either of you have a choice in the matter; now he has all but invited Balaur to kill you. You will die, that is certain and Blaine will die trying to save you and he has no heir. No, no I would not say he has done his _best_.”

“I’m leaving,” Kurt grit out through clenched teeth. Turning toward the mouth of the cave he realized he had no idea where he was or how to get back but he knew Ian did. “Take me back to him.”

“Kurt he took your choice the moment he fell in love with you. I do pity you. He should have chosen someone for more suitable.”

“You don’t care about him at all do you?!” Kurt thundered his heart pounding wildly as he glared down at the seated wizard. “You moved Arthur and everyone you’ve ever known around like pawns. How many of Blaine’s family have died protecting that stupid crown! They’ve all known nothing but misery just so you don’t have to face the fact that you fucked up and Arthur is gone! You can wait for him till the end of the world but let’s get one thing straight. Blaine isn’t Arthur he’s _Blaine_ and I won’t let you use him anymore. I’m not asking you again Ian. Take. Me. Back.”

Kurt didn’t know what he expected Ian to do in response to that but it wasn’t for Ian to sit there unperturbed, a slow smile creeping on his face. Without a word he waved a hand toward the mouth of the cave, a mouth that hadn’t been there a second before. Kurt could see Lina and the cubs sitting in the yard behind Spider’s house like a scene in a snow globe just beyond the misty entrance. Without a glance backwards Kurt strode into the mist and disappeared. Ian sat and watched him go, grinning as he spoke quietly to himself.

“Right again Nimue. He may yet do.”

 

-*-*-

A leaden weight sat like a stone in Adam’s chest. A cold creeping chill beginning somewhere behind his heart and spreading outward, plaguing him with an alarming sense of numbness in his limbs. Though he was edgy with the need for action his mind was sluggish. The grief he felt in his soul was too much for his brain to think past and he knew he was not alone in the ailment. The entire pack felt the wrongness in their Alpha, shared in his aches and pains and the mind numbing grief that crippled him.

Ian had sent them back to Spider’s house and taken Kurt and Blaine away, claiming they needed more than just physical healing after their ordeal. Adam was no wizard and no healer but he knew plenty about bonds. They could never be broken but they could sicken and become diseased. Just because two people fell in love didn’t mean they were always good to each other and when they weren’t there were repercussions.

When Blaine had returned to the house alone he’d been whole in body but not in spirit. Adam thought it had something to do with the scars on his chest. All of Blaine’s cuts and bruises had healed, save for one. The cuts that had appeared on his skin after Ian’s arrival had scarred soft and pink and Adam saw upon close inspection that the shapes actually formed letters.

It surprised him that Kurt and Blaine had a safe-word. They were magic and relatively modern inventions. Adam had been taught their history in school, along with how to create one, and while they were common they were not the standard by any means. The Guild had introduced them as a way to protect omegas but not every alpha thought they were necessary. Some like Harvey Strand even resented them. Many of the lycan elders thought they were an insult to the natural order. Harvey like many of them believed an alpha should be able to do what he pleased without rebuke from outsiders who did not understand their ways.

It surprised Adam that Blaine had given Kurt a safe-word because it had never occurred to him that Blaine of all alphas might need one. Had anyone asked he’d have said Blaine was least likely to abuse his submissive… but the scars on Blaine’s chest were visible proof that he would have been wrong. Blaine had hurt his bond with Kurt, and while Adam could certainly be sympathetic as to why, only time would tell if Kurt would be so forgiving.

In the meanwhile they waited, subdued, keeping the children quiet and as comfortable as they could and keeping a close eye on Blaine. It was hard for all of them to see him that way, harder for Adam and Wes who had known him since they were boys and been with him through every tragedy. It was easy even for them to forget how young Blaine was. They were too used to seeing him capable, too used to him being the glue of the pack and the voice that inspired them all to come together.

If the last two years had shown Adam anything it was that Blaine needed glue of his own and a voice to call him back from his edges. They all did. None of them were made to be alone; they just came undone after a while. Adam had felt the pressure within himself with the passing years and he didn’t have half of Blaine’s responsibility to shoulder. He wondered why Blaine couldn’t see it that way. He took all his failures to heart, holding each one as close to his skin as that scar now marring his chest and would not grant himself any reprieve from guilt. It had been like that since Kala.

“It’s taking him too long to come back. Do you think Kurt will leave?” Adam heard Chandler ask Jeff nervously. The two boys were sitting on the back steps of the house watching Blaine. Adam was standing only a few yards away, keeping guard as his leader paced the yard lost in thoughts he kept tightly wrapped to himself.

“They had _one_ fight, Chan.” Jeff scoffed.

“It wasn’t _just_ a fight Jeff. Blaine almost killed him. They’re supposed to be mates! I wouldn’t blame him for leaving. I’d leave. I might leave with him when he comes back. He’ll come back. I know he will. Kurt wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye.” Adam didn’t need to hear the telltale signs of fear bleeding into panic in Chandler’s voice; he could feel the hysteria bubbling within him between their bond.

He was immediately conflicted by the instinct to sooth and the spark of anger he felt at Chandler’s insinuation that Kurt would be right to run away from Blaine and that he might just do it too. Jeff apparently felt the same because an angry growl rumbled in his throat in response.

“You think he’d come back just to tell Blaine he’s abandoning him!”

“He’s not abandoning Blaine.” Chandler interjected with a growl of his own. “Kurt’s unmated, he can leave if he wants to. He doesn’t owe Blaine anything and Blaine really hurt him. Did you _see_ the letters on his chest? That was a safe word Jeff. He knew he was hurting Kurt and he didn’t stop. Do you know how bad that is?” Chandler hissed the words in a stage whisper and Adam rolled his eyes because only the deaf couldn’t hear him and only Chandler was brave or stupid enough to berate their Alpha within earshot.

“I’m not four Chandler, of course I know how bad that is; but that was the point! How else was he supposed to push Kurt to the edge unless it hurt? What was he supposed to do, get Wes to do it? He’d have snapped and killed him. This way no one suffers but him.”

“Him and _Kurt_ you mean! Mates aren’t supposed to lock you out of their mind and ‘drive you to the edge’ Jeff! He violated their bond and you have no idea what that feels like for a submissive.”

“The _bond_?” Jeff growled incredulously before he clenched his fists and loomed over Chandler. Adam tensed as the rising aggression between the two teens pulled taught at his senses. “Listen! Kurt is going to die if Blaine can’t stay one step ahead of Balaur! He did this for Kurt! Maybe that’s not love in the fairytale you live in but it sure the hell is life. Live with it, Khiel.”

“Oh of course ‘Straight A’ Sterling would think the Alpha can’t do anything wrong.” Chandler shouted back. His cheeks were flushed and Adam could see the shaking in his shoulders that he knew was a sign of the rage he was barely holding in check. Jeff and Chandler had gotten into squabbles before but Adam knew this one was different. This time they were all feeding off their Alpha’s emotional distress and the moon not yet visible was a quarter full. He knew that very easily they could come to blows especially when Chandler snapped his teeth and bit out, “You’d defend Blaine no matter what he did to Kurt just because he’s the Alpha!”

“Screw _Kurt_ , Chandler. This isn’t fucking Shakespeare.” Jeff exploded, pushing Chandler’s chest with both hands and sending the other teen rolling to the bottom step. Adam felt a flash of anger at the sound of Chandlers grunt of pain and had to quell the irrational urge he had to grab Jeff by the neck and haul him somewhere for a good shake. Jeff however didn’t waste any time standing up and shouting down at Chandler, “One wolf doesn’t go above the whole pack. You don’t doom hundreds of people because you can’t live without one person! This is why you’ll never be a leader Chandler. You just don’t get it.”

“Oh and of course you do, because you’re a big strong alpha aren’t you? At least you are this month. We all know last month you took it like the alpha-bitch you are! So you can stop compensa—”

Jeff lunged on Chandler and Adam wasn’t surprised in the least. That had been a challenge if Adam had ever heard one and thus thrown it was better to let the two fight it out so they could put it behind them. Chandler had insulted Jeff and the other boy would never be satisfied until he overpowered the beta now. Adam looked to Blaine who had quit his pacing to watch the teens wrestling in the dirt with a stony expression but neither of them moved to intervene. At times like these the only thing to do was make sure nobody got killed.

The battle, as it was, was over quickly. Jeff had the advantage of not already being on his back plus superior size and muscle. Wes was a much harder alpha-master than Adam knew himself to be and Jeff had gotten his ‘straight A’ nickname from his eagerness to live up to expectation. Chandler landed a good strike or two, raking his extended claws down the left side of Jeff’s face and scraping his shoulder, but he was forced to cease his struggle when Jeff got a hold on his windpipe and gripped it with threatening pressure. There was movement out of the corner of his eye and Adam’s gaze flew to Blaine, watching him approach the two young men.

“Alpha enough for you now Khiel?” Jeff’s eyes were practically on fire as he shouted the words down at Chandler. “You’re nothing but a child. You don’t know anything about what it’s like to really be in love with someone or what it’s like to live in the real world!”

“You’re both acting like children,” Blaine admonished, his tone even but there was no mistaking the commanding it. Flushing Jeff released his grip on Chandler’s throat and the smaller blond coughed and gasped for breath. When he could breathe again he shoved at Jeff’s chest until the other teen got off him.

“Feel better?” Blaine asked Jeff, whose eyes widened with nervousness before he nodded hesitantly. A hint of a smile curled at Blaine’s lip. “I know Wes has been hard on you, Jeff, but you really have done well under his tutelage. You’ve become the warrior you’ve always wanted to be.” There was a light of pride beginning to glow in the Jeff’s eyes and it only intensified when Blaine laid a gentle hand on his tousled hair and gave his scalp an affectionate rub. It bled away however when Blaine’s smile dimmed and his sadness welled up around them all like a rising tide. “And for that I’m truly sorry. I hope you can really consider what Chandler was trying to tell you. It might help you understand why.”

The Alpha and protégé stared at each other for a long moment, sharing private thoughts and then slowly Jeff nodded. Rising to his feet he mustered up the nerve to apologize to Chandler. It didn’t look like Chandler was buying it however; Chandler glared mulishly at the other boy and grit his teeth and didn’t say a word. Jeff glared right back and hissed that he could be like that and stormed back inside the house.

“Chandler…” Blaine crouched until they were eye level and Chandler stiffened, clenching his jaw and raising his chin defiantly. He waited for whatever Blaine would say and Adam had to fight a grin.

“I’ll never forget that you were the first one here to accept Kurt. You’re angry at me and I deserve that. Still, I think you should know how proud of you I am and how glad I am that Kurt found a friend in you. I’m glad he has someone who will always be in his corner.” Chandler’s shoulders relaxed slowly, surprise at Blaine’s praise lowering his guard.

“You’re right. There isn’t any excuse for what I did. I’m not asking to be excused, just forgiven, and I hope that given time you will be able to consider what Jeff said to you and maybe understand why I chose what I chose. Maybe you can’t, maybe you shouldn’t, but whatever you choose Chandler, I am the Alpha here.” Blaine’s voice lowered with command and Adam felt his spine straighten of its own accord. He felt bad for Chandler under the full weight of Blaine’s dominance. “When you reach your majority you are free to leave if you wish to find an Alpha who you can give your respect to freely. Until then you will give it to me because I lead here and I won’t accept it if you don’t. You will respect me and you will respect your peers. You may not agree with alphas bedding alphas but if I hear you saying anything like that again to Jeff or any other alpha, we’re going to have a long talk that you won’t like. Is that understood? Nod if you understand.”

Chandler nodded quickly, his thinner frame trembling under Blaine’s hard gaze and for a long silent moment the Alpha regarded him. Finally he nodded, giving Chandler’s shoulder a soft pat.

At that moment the wind picked up and simultaneously the ears of the three lycan’s perked as the sound of approaching footfalls came to them suddenly, as if the person walking out of the wood had appeared out of thin air. Adam knew before Blaine stood and strode towards the trees that it was Kurt, for Blaine had returned from his time with Ian much the same way.

He hoped that whatever was said now between his Alpha and his mate would be for good. He knew that what Blaine had done wasn’t good, but he understood the why of it. He only hoped Kurt would be more forgiving than Chandler, for he already knew Blaine would not be easy on himself. As Adam watched Kurt appear out of the forest and the two met each other near its edge, he thought on the guilt he carried. Some of that guilt was his own fault.

He thought again of Kala.

Adam would never forget Blaine’s first year of school because it had been the same year his parents sent his sister—a cub he’d never met but had instantly recognized by her scent—to Dalton. He’d known at a sniff that they were family and she like many other first year students had arrived at a strange school in a foreign country separated from all that she knew at the tender age of five. It had been the same for Adam at that age and he remembered keenly the pain of losing his parents and his pack, only he’d had no big brother in residence to ease the unavoidable weakening of those bonds.

He’d only been nine, but he’d vowed to make it as easy for his sister as he could. The fact that she had befriended Blaine—who had somehow seemed as much an orphan as any other first year despite both his parents living in the Anderson house—had only made that duty feel more important. He’d failed in it. Kala had gone missing on an expedition and Blaine had blamed himself for going along with her schemes and sneaking away from the group. In his grief Adam had only fed that guilt. Though they had both learned who was truly at fault and though with the hindsight of an adult Adam accepted there was nothing a child could have done against Julian, he didn’t pretend not to know that Blaine carried the failure with him to this day.

Adam still did.

He was pulled from his thoughts by the feeling of arms sliding around his waist. Chandler clutched him tightly, pressing his sweaty brow against the skin of Adam’s back. Chandler was tactile, even for a lycan, but there was something a little too intimate about the embrace to be appropriate between a protégé and his alpha-master. Adam did not move.

“I don’t want Kurt to go. I’m scared and I just…” Adam could feel the wet heat of Chandler’s tears as he mumbled against his skin. “I just-I’m just- sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt Jeff. I didn’t mean what I said.”

His heart picked up pace in his chest, a familiar heat pooling in his abdomen as Chandler’s scent tickled his nostrils. It wasn’t the first time it had happened. Chandler had been in his care since the boy was thirteen with many moon phases between them. Biology was biology but Adam was determined to be more than his animal urges. Gently he pulled Chandler’s arms away and turned to face him. 

“Fear isn’t a good enough reason to hurt your friends, Chandler, you should be ashamed of what you said about Jeff.” At his words Chandler hung his head and Adam ignored the need he felt to pull him into his arms and comfort him. It was more important that Chandler learn from his mistakes and he would only do that if Adam set clear boundaries and there were consequences when he crossed them. “Kurt’s the one who was injured and it’s up to Kurt what he will and won’t forgive, not your or anyone else. And whether Kurt forgives him Blaine’s your Alpha. You don’t have to agree with him but if nothing else you owe him a civil tongue.”

“I’m sorry Alpha,” the young man pleaded sounding far younger than his seventeen years, which only made it worse how fast Adam’s pulse jumped at the words. This was his protégé, he was calling him Alpha out of respect to his authority. The bond he felt with the boy was rightfully intense, sacred even, but it was supposed to be paternal. He was being trusted with shaping this young man’s mind and preparing him for adulthood. He was the boys second parent, a time honored tradition, and he wasn’t going to abuse that honor no matter what he felt when Chandler begged him with wet eyes not to hate him.

“I don’t hate you. Chan, I could _never_ hate you.” There was too much emotion escaping from him Adam knew, but he just couldn’t stomach the thought that Chandler would think some hurtful words flung during a trying time for all of them could break their bond.

“Then why do you feel like your heart is breaking?” Chandler asked quietly. “You don’t have to pretend. I felt it earlier. I didn’t mean to disappoint you, Alpha I—”

“Oh Chandler, Chan, that wasn’t about you.” Adam laughed in relief when he realized that Chandler had misinterpreted his grief over the memory of his sister. “God no, don’t think that. What you think I never got in a brawl and said stupid things a week before the full moon? Not everything’s about you, you know.” He grinned down at the boy, trying to pull a smile out of him. “I told you, didn’t I, one of these days your vanity was going to get you in trouble?”

Chandler tried to smile but it wobbled and crumpled before it ever got off the ground and Adam decided it was okay to pull him into a purely paternal sort of hug, because after all cubs needed hugging sometimes.

“What am I going to do with you Chan.?” He sighed, petting the boys sweat darkened hair. Inspired he sang softly, “You’re so vain. Bet you think this song is about you. Don’t you don’t you…” He waited a moment and was rewarded when he felt the gentle vibration of Chandler’s chuckles and he slapped a hand against him and grumbled, “Jerk.”

-*-

When Kurt beckoned Blaine followed him silently into the trees, putting distance between them and the curious eyes and ears of those at the house, though it did not escape his notice that Crawford was too wrapped up in his protégé to notice that his Alpha was walking into the wood unprotected. Blaine didn’t think any more of it. They weren’t going far and he more than knew how to handle himself in a fight.

His heart was thudding heavily in his chest, his eyes glued to Kurt’s pale back as they walked. He drank in the sight of his flawless flesh, no lingering signs of their battles and his eyes stung with relief. It was too much a mercy that Kurt hadn’t been scarred outwardly by his actions. It was only right that he could not say the same.

When they were out of earshot Kurt turned to him and Blaine opened his mouth to plead forgiveness but the words died before they ever made it off his tongue, stifled by the look in Kurt’s eyes. Kurt did not speak immediately. His eyes fell to the scars on Blaine’s chest and Blaine felt the urge to curl in on himself but he resisted it. He’d more than earned their shame. His eyes widened when Kurt extended his arm slowly, brushing his fingertips against the raised edges of the scars, tracing the word in silent regard.

“I need to know if you understand why this is here.” Blaine jumped when he finally spoke but he quickly nodded.

“Because I hurt you, in your heart, where it counts.” He confessed. “I heard you calling for me, felt how much you needed me, and I shut you out because I knew I couldn’t keep hurting you if I allowed you to get close to me. I made you feel alone and terrified when I’m supposed to protect you.”

Inexplicably Kurt let out a soft sigh of relief his hand curling where it lay on Blaine’s chest and Blaine watched him in confusion. He had feared the worst, expected it really, but rather than rail or cry and announce he was leaving he stepped closer to Blaine and stared into him with frightening intensity.

“I want you to know I understand why you did it; but I need to know that you understand why you shouldn’t have. And I want you to promise me you’ll _never_ do that again.”

“I won’t.” Blaine did not even have to think on it. Ian had told him as much but he’d known even while he’d let it happen that he could never live through it again.

“Mean it,” Kurt insisted. “Because I swear Blaine, bite or no bite, if you put me through that again I’ll give you what you’re looking for. I’ll let the wolf have you and then I’ll leave. I won’t be a bird in a cage, no matter how gilded. You can’t just bring me out and pet me when you like and lock me up when it’s convenient.”

“I know. You don’t know how sorry I am.”

“I do know. Because I know _you_ Blaine. I know what you have on your shoulders and I’m going to stand beside you. I told you before. Blaine, all I want is to know that you respect me as much as you think you love me. I want to know that you trust me to do the right thing for us and for the pack.”

Blaine saw Kurt’s lips making the words, his brain processed them and told him that Kurt was offering him forgiveness on conditions but he just could not get himself from hearing to believing. When he felt Kurt gearing up the courage to say more his heart sped up, delirious hope rushing through him like lightning.

“Our pack Blaine.” Kurt said and Blaine inhaled sharply.

“Kurt?” He realized he’d started to cry when he could only manage choking his name out.

“Because you love them and I love them—well, _some_ of them,” Kurt laughed through the tears that were beginning to well in his own eyes. “They’re your life and I want to be part of that life too. Those are my conditions. I’m not looking for perfection, Blaine, just partnership. Can you give me that?”

“Yes.” He’d barely managed to get the words out before Kurt leapt on him, throwing his arms around Blaine’s neck and holding him tightly, their tears rolling down their cheeks and dampening each other’s skin. “Kurt… Kurt does this mean…” Blaine told himself to stop, not to hope. He couldn’t believe.

“Yes. Blaine, yes.” Kurt’s breath was hot against his ear, his lips warm and moist where he pressed kisses down the side of his face, tasting tears. “I didn’t want to tie you to me in case… I wanted to protect you the only way I thought I could but that’s not… it’s not what I want. And it wouldn’t work anyway. We love each other. It’s done, so we’re going to do this together, okay? I _want_ to do this with you.”

Kurt captured his lips and Blaine met him eagerly, holding him so tightly there was no chance of his escape even if this was the dream he thought it was. He pushed Kurt backwards holding him up when he stumbled on the uneven forest floor until his back met the trunk of a tree and braced him up. Blaine kissed him till they were breathless. Then he kissed over his cheeks and down the pale column of his neck, chasing the taste of saline as if he could amend all their pains with the touch of love alone. He’d have let Kurt cut touch his heart with bare hands if he thought it would heal where he had bruised him.

How could it be that after what he’d done Kurt could still look at him with dazed wonder and the heat of passion to be sure but something much deeper as well, a force behind his eyes that pulled Blaine in and threatened to undo him. It already had and ever would it for it was ageless what lay between them.

‘I know you’ he thought. He’d known this man forever.

Kurt smiled, pulling him close until Blaine’s lips brushed his neck right over his pulse. His heart was thundering. Blaine could smell the blood roaring through Kurt’s veins. It called to him, for there was magic to be had in its stream, binding magic.

“I know you too,” Kurt murmured with finality and then he tilted his head back, presenting his neck, and closed his eyes. 

Blaine closed his and struggled to breathe.

“Kurt.”

“What?” Kurt kept his eyes closed, dread in his voice.

“We have to wait.”

“What?! Why? Blaine you’ve been waiting for this since—”

“Since the moment I knew I loved you. Believe me, I want this, but when I bite you I’m going to want to claim you in _every_ way and—”

“You mean sex?” When Blaine nodded Kurt rolled his eyes and pulled him in to another kiss. “Good news. I really want to have sex with you.”

“No… no, Kurt,” Blaine struggled to pull away, a task made extra difficult by the way he kept kissing Kurt and groping his ass. Kurt grinned and Blaine pulled back to frown reproachfully at him. Kurt sighed.

“Okay, why not now? I’m finally ready.”

“Well…two reasons. Number one we won’t be able to function well after the bite. We’ll be all over each other until the binding settles and we’re out in the middle of a hostile state with a bunch of cubs to watch over. It would be irresponsible to—”

“Okay, got it. Sex is distracting and we’re babysitting. What’s number two?”

“Number two is Ian.” Kurt’s eyes narrowed and Blaine went on. “I don’t doubt you love me but this just seems… too good to be true? Especially after what I did. Ian might be on our side but he has an agenda. Ian always has an agenda and he’s not above giving people a push in the direction he desires.”

“You think he did something to me?” Kurt asked dryly and this time Blaine was the one to sigh.

“You don’t know him.” Kurt snorted in reply to that.

“Oh I wouldn’t put it past him. It’s just that I was there, Blaine. He didn’t do anything to me but tell me old stories and moan about how I’m going to be your ruin. He doesn’t like me enough to want me to be your mate, trust me.”

“I don’t want to wake up one day and find you regret this. If he put any sort of charm on you it will burn out before the full moon. It’s perfect because it’s after your challenge and before the conclave. If you still want it then Kurt I’ll claim you when the moon is full and then you’ll be mine.”

Kurt let out his breath slowly. He glared off into the distance for a moment at the thought of Ian but when he looked back at Blaine there was the fire of determination in his eyes. He leaned forward just the slightest, till their lips were only a breath a part.

“I’m already yours.” He leaned back and Blaine swayed. Quite without realizing it he’d leaned instinctively to close the scant distance between their mouths. Kurt smirked at him. “You make a valid argument on the being in the middle of hostile wilderness point. We’ll get the kids back to safety and _then_ we’re finishing this, Anderson. I know my own mind and I’m not taking no for an answer.”

“And _I’m_ not going to let Ian take your choice away.” Blaine insisted, unable to shake the feeling he was right about Ian. Kurt couldn’t have forgiven him that easily. Blaine wouldn’t have forgiven him if he were Kurt.

“Blaine this _is_ my choice.”

“Okay. I need a week. I promised you all the time you needed. You say you’re sure. Now I’m not. So give me a week.” Blaine responded mulishly and Kurt glared at him, thinking it over.

“You seriously want us to hold out till the full moon?” He asked. “You realize we’ll be ready to pop by then. Think mess, Blaine, like science project volcanoes mess.” Blaine chuckled.

“It’s nothing we weren’t planning to do already. Please Kurt. Don’t you think we’ll be happier knowing for sure?” He wouldn’t be able to live with it if Kurt ended up regretting it.

“Fine,” Kurt relented and Blaine grinned furiously in relief.

“Thank you,” he said and Kurt pulled him into a hug.

“Don’t thank me,” he murmured, his breath tickling Blaine’s ear.

Blaine opened his mouth to ask Kurt why but froze when he felt Kurt’s warm hands slide down his back and settle on his ass, tugging Blaine closer to his slightly taller frame. Blaine could feel where they were both half hard, hot against each other and he sucked in a breath. Grinning Kurt tugged on his earlobe with his teeth and then whispered.

“I never said anything about not trying to change your mind. This is looking like it’s going to be a hard week for you.”

“Kurt that’s not fair.” He knew it was a pathetic plea even as he said it and Kurt gave him a look, because yeah. Blaine hadn’t exactly been fair to him that week either.

He supposed if the hell he was in for was Kurt’s way of punishing him he’d more than earned it.

“Life isn’t fair Blaine, and seeing how crazy about you I am there’s a lot I’ll sympathize with you over.” A hand trailed it’s way over Blaine’s hip bone and down to the soft skin of his inner thigh as Kurt spoke. “The fact that I want to start a life together but you’d rather play martyr because of some assumed conspiracy isn’t one of them.” He watched Blaine’s mouth fall open in a shudder of pleasure as he wrapped a hand around Blaine’s stiffening cock with a small smile.

Kurt stroked him firmly and Blaine wasn’t sure whether he blanked out or his eyes rolled back in his head but he groaned and Kurt’s lips were on his again swallowing the sound. His tongue licked into Blaine’s mouth, quick and dirty, and then he was pulling away leaving Blaine to brace himself on the tree and pant for breath.

“You can end your misery at any time. It’s up to you,” Kurt said and then he turned and began walking back toward the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to thank you all for your continued support and feed back. *HUGS* It's been a pretty stressful week and I'm trying to get these out to you guys as quickly as I can. :) To answer one of your comments right now, no I am not Romanian (though I was really excited that you would think so. Yay for using things correctly!) My love of the culture and language actually comes purely from a guy I dated in college. LOL had to go back after school and I'm pretty sure he is married now but I still want to live there for awhile and write a book someday.


	21. Interlude: Meanwhile in Columbus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chekov's gun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to the split narrative during the expedition this part of the story was separated from chapter 19, and after trying unsuccessfully to merge it with chapter 20's beginning I've decided it works well enough on it's own. Also what with work kicking up chapters are taking longer and I figured you'd be keen for an update.
> 
> Helpful terms.
> 
> Nulo/Nasa: _Romanian origin_. A secondary parent and guide. Cubs may spend as much (if not more) of their youth with their secondary parent(s) whose task it is to shape them for a designated role within the pack. Typically these are elder wolves and often related to the cub by blood. This arrangement allows the parents of cubs, who are the most physically fit, to see to the daily needs of the pack and for elders to leave their knowledge with the young. _Note: In some cultures this practice has largely been replaced by appointment of a single Alpha-Master, who is typically not related to their protégé and younger._
> 
> Vryloka: _Greek origin_. Mythical creatures who drank blood and displayed other supernatural abilities (including the ability to shift their shape). Their histories have become tangled with the Turkish _Vampir_ and humans remain confused on the exact origin and abilities of vampires as a result.
> 
> Spanish in order of appearance: _Abuela_ , grandmother. _Como te atreves_ , How dare you. _Veo sus deseos, cachorro_ , I see your desires child (pup). _Qué disparate_ , what nonsense.

_Friday Night: the night before the expedition_

Garcinia berries crushed

Ginseng powdered

Heart of dove

Spathiphyllum ground

Blood

Stir, heat, and wait.

Jesse St. James hated Ohio and after spending the last month in Europe on magically rich grounds the likes of the Vatican and Stonehenge he almost couldn’t stand to come back to it (even if Rome hadn’t exactly been a picnic). Even under the control of a creature the likes of the Master Jesse would have rather been back in Italy, than trapped in the dull dreary landscape of central Ohio. Columbus especially was a thorn. Cities, their monotony and their dull bleating sheep like people with their obsessions with blending into each other, tended to drain the land of its natural magic. Magic could always be done by a wizard anywhere but magic was pulled from without as much as it was from within, and Columbus just had no _pulse_. It was maddening, also exactly why The Guild Council had banished him to his post at the temple in the first place.

They’d claimed he needed time to seek ‘spiritual guidance’ from the druids of old the year before, after his early experiments proved unstable, but Jesse knew their real reason was fear. But ruthless determination was in his blood apparently, along with madness, because he had persevered with his experiments despite being banished to the most useless city in the entire region and watched closely by the Guild. Jesse couldn’t help a smirk at the fact that despite their attempts to stop him, not only was he close to achieving his goals, he’d managed to do it right in the Council’s backyard. By now they’d know someone had stolen the cup and that had to have them very worried indeed.

His uncle had taught him the rules of magic when he was a child and he could still hear Uncle Dagan whispering to him that power attracted power. Oh and how was it true.

Ohio might be a desert so far as natural magic was concerned but to the north there was an oasis, a diamond in the dark coal, the most brilliant and brightest flares to ever exist in the darkness of the world. Though it was hidden away a wizard could hardly call himself that if he could stand within twenty miles of Westerville and not feel the draw of the land, and Jesse was the greatest wizard that had ever lived.

Or he would be when he achieved his purposes, saving the world from its petty wars and the constant mad scramble for power. People needed rules. They cried freedom yet hungered for kings to relieve them of their duty to preserve it. Jesse had gone to wizard school like any good young wizard and he’d practically been weaned on the histories of their Merlin. His uncle Dagan had been particularly obsessed with the age of Arthur and it was a fascination he’d shared with his nephew.

Though the average wizard was happy to ignore it, certain truths could not be avoided. Once there had been a king named Arthur, once there had been a sword that could slay whole armies, once there had been a crown that had allowed a boy to bring seven continents under his dominion, and once a knight had journeyed to find a cup that promised immortality. 

All of these things had been in the hands of the Merlin at one time or another, and rather than use them to see to the betterment of the world they lived in he let them go to dust and the world was darker than it had ever been before. The cup had been hidden away in plain sight, behind glass in a museum, posing as some boring relic for tourists to gawk at from a forgotten age. Little had any of them known that a sip from that seemingly non-descript wooden chalice would have healed their aching feet and sun burnt skin, as well as every other illness that could have plagued them. A sip from the grail could prolong a man’s life indefinitely, so long as he had it to drink from.

Jesse could smell the readiness of his brew and he thought it was just on time too. The fire in the fireplace fluttered wildly for a moment, threatening to go out as the door to his private quarters blew open and in stumbled his accomplice turned captor. M slid to the floor against the door frame, panting desperately for breath, holding his sides tightly though it didn’t do much to stem the flow of blood between his fingers.

There was always so much blood with M.

Though it did not surprise Jesse in the least to see the creature known by others only as Master covered in blood and entrails, it was a grizzly sight to be sure and Jesse gagged at the coppery smell wafting throughout the room.

“You’ve gone and killed him haven’t you?” He guessed, fury and fear battling with each other for supremacy. They had a very specific plan and part of that plan had included Sam Evans. M needed him (Jesse needed him) and only Sam would do. If the blood thirsty fiend had gone and killed their best pawn Jesse might just take his chances and try poisoning the bastard just to be free of him.

“He’s alive,” M snapped, gesturing vaguely toward the stairs with his hand as he wheezed.

“You lie; you’re covered in blood and guts,” Jesse insisted. “Getting them all over my rug too.”

“I always lie,” M giggled gleefully, the sound wheezing out of him and ending in a pained gasp. “But this time I tell you the truth. The blood is not all Sam’s. First Sam, then the Father, then the Innocent…”

“You… you killed three people tonight?” Jesse stilled, going pale as he considered the weakened man before him. That was not the plan. M was losing control, but then again Jesse had known he would. M had known he would. He was a fiend. Undeniably powerful, and Jesse supposed there had once been something handsome about him, but he wore his thirst on his face and the madness that consumed him was ever in his eyes. Jesse had seen it often as a boy.

“Just one, the Innocent, Sam’s blood whet my appetite. I went after the Father…”

“We were going to wait to get Burt—”

“I know!” M screamed at him and Jesse quickly fell silent, trying not to quiver as the long limbed creature pulled himself across the floor, inching closer and closer to the fire. “Quit your whining. He and Sam both escaped me. I killed the girl to speed things along. I’m tired of these games and playing in shadows. It’s time to come out from behind the curtain, Jesse. It’s time for Oz to meet the wizard don’t you think?”

Jesse didn’t, but he also knew it wasn’t a question he was meant to answer. Instead he asked where Sam was.

“He’s downstairs in the sanctuary.”

“Good,” Jesse sniffed in reply, turning back to his cauldron and the wooden chest he’d placed upon the mantle. “We need him M. You’ve really got to get a better handle on your thirst. You can’t just go eating people for fun, especially when we need them.”

“ _I_ need him, St. James. I am the one using you. I am the master here, and it is I who will have the crown.” M growled and without bidding Jesse felt his throat tighten as if a meaty hand had grabbed it and squeezed. Jesse struggled in vain for air and when M finally released him there were black dots in his vision and he crumbled to his knees. Though it had been painful to be sure the attack wasn't near as strong as he was used to from M.

It was the temple, Jesse realized. It was the first time M had ever been inside it, or any holy ground that the wizard knew of. Vampires could not walk on hallowed ground. It was an enchantment placed on them by the Merlin himself, centuries ago, to give the common people sanctuary from the marauding vampire tribes who had not yet come under Guild control.

He supposed this proved it then. He, and probably he alone, knew M’s story, but there were many parts of it that Jesse hadn’t really believed up until now. Despite his blood lust M was not truly a vampire, but he must have been enough of one after all because the temple seemed to be affecting him quite negatively.

“My god,” Jesse gapped, his mind racing with the endless possibilities that true belief had brought to his attention. “You really are… you really are _vryloka_ aren’t you?” His uncle had been so sure that they had once existed, so sure that enemy blood could find a home in one host, and the proof was crawling towards him.

“The cup!” M demanded and Jesse scrambled to his feet, swaying with dizziness as he grappled blindly for the mantle. With trembling hands the young wizard opened the chest and lifted from within it the grail.

Small and crudely carved it looked deceptively light, its unexpected heaviness at odds with its size. Holding it cradled between his palms he felt the warmth of the wood against his skin, unnatural warmth. It was beautiful in the most inexplicable of ways and though Jesse felt M’s hungry gaze on him as he poured a ladle full of the blood brew he’d prepared into the cup, the young wizard could not take his eyes from the cup for more than a moment.

It was not every day a man held immortality in his hands.

It pained him to hand it over to the vryloka but he dared not refuse the desperate hands that reached for the cup and tore it from his grasp to drink greedily of its contents.

What happened then could only be described as magic of the quietest kind. There were no flashes of light or puffs of perfumed smoke, just the quieting of M’s greedy gulps of blood, the gentle shivers of his long frame as he lowered the cup and licked contentedly at his lips. And it was the gentleness that was so out of place, the softness that had come over the pale man’s features, the way his cheeks then flushed prettily with life and warmth… the mirthful gleam of clear blue eyes. Gone was the monster.

M lay on the floor slowly blinking at the ceiling, an almost drunken smile on his lips as he sighed with the relief of a dying man, a man so burdened that he welcomed the release of death like the arrival of a helping hand. For a wild moment Jesse was very afraid that he really had poisoned him.

“Master?” His voice shook as he inquired because despite how terrified he was of the man and how terrible he was, Jesse could not do what he needed to do without him.

“Yes?” When M replied his voice was different, deeper, less manic, saner somehow. Jesse felt the first tingling of relief. Perhaps it really had worked. He couldn’t help the rush of glee he felt. He had labored on that potion for months. The grail had been the last component, for it was essential that the brew be taken from the grail. If he had managed to do what he’d promised M he could it was a major victory. M would precede with _his_ plan and Jesse would proceed with his. When the time was right the thrall would kill the master because even with the grail there was no cure for what ailed M. The full magical properties of the grail could only be accessed by the one the grail had chosen and Galahad was long dead.

The potion such as it was would clear M’s head, dull his blood lust, but a man had to eat and Jesse was fairly certain that unless M restricted himself to a diet of this special brew the madness would return. Dieting, beyond the full moon at least, was nowhere in the vryloka’s plans. M’s thirst would return and with time they had observed that it would only grow and grow… it had begun already. Jesse knew what no other person alive knew. The madman was afraid of going mad.

He would. He would continue to lose whatever mind he had regained, and go on to try and create others like himself. And they would become a plague the likes the world hadn’t seen since the vryloka haunted it in tribes during the dark ages. Not unless he was stopped first. Jesse considered that his duty and he’d see to it. The Guild would have to take him seriously then, and surely after he’d killed M and the crown was in his possession they would see the clear way forward was to stop waiting around for the return of some dead King and appoint a new living one? Who better than he, the greatest wizard alive? The novice who had managed to do what the Merlin could not.

“How do you feel?” Jesse asked eagerly, his eyes memorizing every twitch and pull of muscle as M rose to his feet and stretched his powerful arms, a brilliant and easy grin splitting his handsome face.

“It’s gone, Jesse. The hunger is gone.”

*~*~*

_Day One: Columbus_

The best thing about working at the Hell Hole Tavern (seriously that was its name) for Santana Lopez was that when the city was being stalked by a demonic vampire master they closed early. And that was really the _only_ good thing. Her boss RJ was an asshole and an all around cheap bastard. He’d made poor Celeste come to work the day after her accident even though she’d been sporting a fancy new neck brace and a pair of crutches. He was cheap enough to want to try and stay open late, putting his staff at risk, but Santana wasn’t about to miss a night off of work. Because work nights meant no Guard duty and no work on her work nights meant ice cream on the couch with Britt and a Sweet Valley High marathon.

But that night it wasn’t to be.

Santana knew something was up the minute she caught a whiff of Alpha Shuester’s body wash (seriously what kind of self-respecting lycan used scented soaps) and a minute later when he strolled up to her bar like he spent all his afternoons hanging out at the Hell Hole. He didn’t (or else the place would have been even more appropriately named) so if he was here it had to mean bad news. Santana was the only lycan she knew working there and also the only lycan in Columbus with a vampire as a house guest. So as Will saddled up to the bar with Beta-Major Shelby not far behind him she stiffened, bracing herself for trouble.

She’d grown close to Brittany during her time at the house, unwisely close, because she wasn’t like other vampires at all. She was an innocent in a bloody world, one of the most human human beings she’d ever encountered despite her fangs and her broken mind. Santana didn’t really think she was broken at all, just different now. Brittany was out of place and maybe that was something Santana could understand.

“Didn’t expect to see you here Shuester,” the woman sneered at the curly haired Alpha as he took a seat. Leader or no leader, Shue had a tendency to put her back up. “With the way you’ve got Shelby running us all ragged these days I thought you’d be busy. Maybe catching that vampire that’s killing everybody?”

“Everything that can be done to catch the rogue is being done. And we don’t really know it’s a vampire.” Will started and Santana felt an inexplicable surge of rage, because she’d _warned_ Tina and her leech buddies about this shit.

“Oh please. Don’t tell me you’re buying that crock about it being Hummel.” She didn’t let Will get past opening his mouth to reply. She could see it all over his smarmy little face. “That’s bullshit. I would know. I’m a master at bullshit. And you know it is too but you don’t really care. You’ll let Hummel take the fall because it’s easier than giving a damn and trying to stop it.”

“Santana, I am your Alpha! You’re not to talk to me that way again.” Shue barked at her and Santana turned toward the guy in the long jacket who had waved for her at the other end of the bar, rolling her eyes the whole way because if Shue was any proper sort of Alpha he’d bite her and save the barking for later. That was Shue’s whole problem as a leader. No damn back bone where it counted.

The guy in the coat ordered a beer and some fries and stared at her like she was on the menu but he was a serious hotty so Santana let him gawk. It was better than being subjected to Shue any day. When she returned to the Alpha and pack Beta, Shelby put a hand on Shue’s arm to keep him quiet (because she wore the pants in that relationship and everyone knew it).

“Hummel’s involvement is not something you need to worry about,” the Beta said. “The rogue will be caught, whoever he is, and appropriately punished. In the meantime we have a situation on our hands.”

“Why do I get the feeling somebody decidedly not me fucked up and now I have to clean it up?”

“You’re off Guard duty until further notice.” Shelby announced and Santana gaped at her.

“What? Why! Because I had the audacity to point out the truth that Shue here would be happy to let Balaur frame Hummel?”

“And _why_ would I do that Santana?” Shue asked with an exasperated sigh, as if he couldn’t fathom a reason.

“Because you’re not stupid, and everyone knows the Council only appointed regional Alphas as a temporary solution to the sudden lack of a certain mythical king. You’re threatened by Anderson and you’re under the very _very_ mistaken impression that if he croaks before the Merlin takes all your toys away that Westerville will fall under your control.”

“If Westerville found itself without an Alpha and no blood heir I would of course be happy to see to the needs of its people, but that hardly makes me a villain Santana and I’m certainly not plotting to kill their Alpha,” Will responded patiently and Santana just gave him a droll look.

“But it’s not like you would pull him out of the way of an oncoming truck either.” When she felt the weight of Shelby’s dominance fall over her she crossed her arms and lowered her head to signal some sort of submission but she still mumbled, “It’s true.”

“Lopez that’s really enough.” Shelby rebuked. The grip of her dominance was still tight so Santana stayed quiet. “After that little display it wouldn’t shock anyone if we threw you off the guard permanently… but that’s not why we’re here. There has been another killing, a vampire woman this time—”

Santana momentarily blanked out. Her senses focused in on the somehow intangible yet tangible thin threads that ran between her and everyone she loved, honing in on the one between her and Brittany in particular.

She only breathed a sigh of relief when she felt the bond, strong as ever, still thriving between them.

“…. So we need you to stay with Pierce and personally see to it that she doesn’t come to harm until her envoy comes to take her to Balaur.” Santana checked back in just in time to catch the tail end of Shelby’s speech and she glowered.

“What do you think I’ve been doing all this time? Inviting people over for hunting practice? Why the sudden security detail?”

“Santana the vampire that was killed bore a striking resemblance to Pierce, all the way down to eye color. What’s more her body was found in the Chang’s private theater box.” Shelby informed her and Santana blinked as she tried to process the information. The rogue had killed a vampire woman that looked like Britt and put her in her guardian’s private theater box? The message couldn’t be any clearer.

Opera night was like a vampire holiday. It was their chance to dress up and posture with each other and strike illicit deals under cloth tables, their chance to get a kick out of showing off their wealth and their thralls and to intimidate with their power. Santana shivered in disgust just picturing it. Brittany belonged to Michael Chang Senior’s household. The placement of the body wasn’t just a warning of intent. It was a dare.

It didn’t sit right with Santana.

The fact that Brittany had been singled out as the target of the rogue, while undoubtedly throwing further shade on Hummel, didn’t make much sense if you believed like she did that the true hand behind the killings was none other than Balaur himself.

Killing unsuspecting humans was one thing, a seasoned vampire was quite another. Dumping the body in the middle of enemy territory? Impossible. It wouldn’t be hard at all to argue against Kurt’s involvement in something that would have taken precise timing and a skill level that Hummel just couldn’t possess. So what did Balaur gain by killing one of his own and making it look like the rogue was after an otherwise unimportant vampire female? Santana didn’t know, and that was a feeling she didn’t like at all.

*~*~*

_Day Two: Columbus_

Burt woke with his head pounding and a strange feeling in his chest that he couldn’t describe. It wasn’t quite pain but it was still discomforting, and for a moment he heard Kurt’s voice in his head warning him to see a doctor immediately and Carol right on his heels asking him if he’d taken his medication. His lips quirked automatically in a smile before his memory caught up with him and his heart leapt. Kurt wasn’t here because that _thing_ was after him. Come to think of it, where was here? He blinked the sleep out of his eyes and sat up slowly, stifling a groan as his healing body protested the movement.

Someone had done a good job patching him up. There were bandages on his chest and he didn’t feel ready to run any marathons but he felt way better than he knew he had a right to. Not the way that vampire had tossed him around. He’d have been dead if not for Puck and that woman showing up. Burt took a cautious look around him, noting the relative normalness of his surroundings and reasoning to himself that it didn’t look like he was in either a Vampire’s lair or a werewolf’s den.

It was just an apartment like any other, maybe a bit messier than Carol would have approved of. The owner of the resident became obvious when he turned and craned his neck to get a look in the kitchen and his eyes seemed to zero in on Finn’s face, captured in several pictures along with Puck and some strangers pinned to the fridge by a guitar shaped magnet. He should have been more relieved, waking up in the home of one of his step-son’s friends but Burt couldn’t get the sight of those wolves out of his mind. They’d been big, dark, and ferocious, terrifying in a way that the movies just couldn’t capture. Puck was a werewolf and not only had he kept that a secret, Burt didn’t think it was coincidence at all that his son had gotten bitten by one of those things and Finn’s best friend just happened to be one.

He didn’t know what Puck had to do with Kurt going missing but Burt needed to get answers and he knew he wasn’t going to get them just by asking. His first attempt to get to his feet was a bust, the muscles in his abdomen burning with protest that had him aborting the effort halfway through and breaking out in a sweat. 

When he heard what sounded like footsteps outside in the hall he pushed past the pain and stumbled away from the couch, searching for a weapon as he heard a key turn in the lock. The nearest object was a guitar on a stand propped up near the couch. He grabbed the heavy instrument like a club just as the door opened and a young woman stepped inside.

When she caught sight of him the brunette yelped in surprise. Puck came charging in after her at the sound, growling like a guard dog. His eyes darted around the room until they landed on Burt with his weapon raised and ready to swing at a moment’s notice. His eyes bugged.

“Hey woah, Burt, relax man. That’s an eight hundred dollar guitar.” For a moment, Burt almost laughed, taken back to the days of listening to Finn and Puck mess around on one instrument or another while they talked about everything from cars to girls. Except not everything. Puck had kept secrets from them all.

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Well it’s about to meet one of your heads in a second if you don’t tell me where the hell my kid is.” Puck flinched like Burt had threatened to throw his first born against a wall and the woman he was with scoffed and gave him a disgusted look before turning to Burt.

“Mr. Hummel we assure you, Kurt is safe—” Burt didn’t care about assurances. He wanted to see Kurt with his own eyes.

“I wanna know where!”

“Burt,” Puck tried but Burt wouldn’t rely on the easy relationship they’d once had. Puck was a werewolf and Kurt had been bitten by one and then gone missing. That was all that had to matter to him right now.

“Five seconds and then I start swinging!”

“Westerville!” Puck rushed to answer when Burt lifted the guitar another threatening inch and the woman let out an exasperated puff of breath.

“Mr. Hummel that is really quite enough! Put Noah’s guitar down.” She barked, and Burt couldn’t explain why he did it, he just did, like his arms suddenly operated outside of his control. He knew in his head that he didn’t really want to hand over the guitar to Puck or go and sit down on the couch, but he did when she told him to.

It scared the shit out of him what these guys were capable of. He could move as much as he wanted except when he ordered his body to get up from the couch. Then it was like someone heavy was sitting on him. No amount of straining seemed able to get his ass out of his seat.

“That’s uh… alpha control.” Puck explained as he sat in a chair opposite Burt, his guitar cradled to his chest and a healthy distance between them. Burt was kind of irritated that once again he had the urge to smile. “I’m sorry Rachel took control like that but you were kind of crazy man.”

“Crazy? Last night I found out my kid was bitten and abducted by werewolves. Then I was attacked by a vampire. Now you’re a werewolf and you’re telling me _I’m_ what’s crazy here?”

“Two nights ago,” the woman, Rachel, corrected softly and Burt started.

“Pardon?”

“Two nights ago you were attacked by an unknown vampire. The damage to your heart was not something Puck or I could fix so we brought you here to be seen by a wizard. It took some time for you to wake up.”

Two days? He’d lost two whole days, his mind reeled. It was only then that he realized. The discomforting feeling in his chest wasn’t pain or even the echoes of it. It was the absence of it; the absence of aches and twinges that he had become so used to after his heart had failed him that they had faded into the background and blended into the everyday.

“What did you do to me?” He heard himself ask and Puck took it to mean he was talking about what Rachel had done with her voice.

“It’s something all alpha’s can use… dominants anyway. I didn’t want to do things this way but you have to listen to us. We don’t have a lot of time here and sticking around could put Kurt in danger.” Any urge that Burt had to smile fled at those words.

“He is in danger.” He insisted. “That killer was at his place!” Puck and Rachel shared an alarmed look and when Puck nodded subtly Burt got the feeling they were somehow communicating without having to open their mouths. Which was going to stop because he was tired of being in the dark. “Hey, hey, please. Okay I’m sitting. I’m listening, just please… Puck, tell me what’s happening to Kurt. I don’t care about the wolf thing or any of it right now. You saved my life, so I figure you’re not the bad guy here. I don’t know maybe you are. But you’re my best bet. So I am begging you, if you care anything about me or my family at all, tell me where Kurt is.”

“I am on your side Burt, I know that’s kinda hard to trust out of hand but in this case you’ve just got to do it.” Puck said, leaning toward him. “About two months ago Kurt was bitten by a rogue wolf. It was the full moon and the guy was out of control.”

“Two months ago…” Burt furrowed his brow in thought. “Kurt was still here then. He never said anything about getting bit by a werewolf. Why wouldn’t he tell us something like that?”

“The term we prefer is lycan,” Rachel quipped and Burt winced. Smoothing the skirt she wore the woman gentled her voice and added, “And converts don’t typically remember the bite. There’s a lot of pain associated with it that their minds block out.”

“I don’t… I don’t understand how this could happen.” Burt rubbed at his temples. “Are you telling me that at any time one of you guys could decide to bite someone and they’d be infected and not even know it?”

“We’re not sick, Burt, we don’t _infect_ people.” Puck’s voice was tense as he replied and Burt didn’t say anything more, unwilling to risk further angering the one person who seemed willing and able to get him to his son. “Something you should probably just get used to now that Kurt is one of us, is the idea that you don’t know the first thing about being lycan and everything you’ve been taught is probably wrong. There’s a lot of shit in the world that humans don’t understand. People call it magic, science could probably explain it after a few decades of research but that’s tough luck on science’s end because no lycan in their right mind is going to agree to be experimented on by the guy with the pitch fork and the torch.”

Puck reminded him of Kurt just then, the things he’d said during the press about the Show And Tell bill, how fervently he’d argued against it on behalf of people he’d never even met… or at least Burt had assumed Kurt had never actually met a lycan. It occurred to him now that that had been last month, and if Puck was telling the truth Kurt had already been bitten by then. It made Burt queasy to think about. Had Kurt known? Was that why he hadn’t told Burt he’d been bitten? Burt wouldn’t have told himself either after sitting in on conversations like that. He made a promise to himself then, to honor the one he’d made to his son when he was a teenager, that he’d be loved no matter who he discovered he was.

“I’m sorry.” He admitted quietly and Puck and Rachel both blinked at him in surprise. “Go on. Tell it your way but please, start from the beginning. None of this is making much sense.”

“I actually don’t know much more than you,” Puck admitted. “Lycans run in packs, and we don’t get too involved in the business of others.”

“Kurt’s not with yours?”

“No, like I said he’s in Westerville.”

“Westerville, that’s a were-lycan community right?” Burt caught himself and Rachel beamed an approving smile at him before shaking her head.

“No, humans live there too but yes it is home to the largest safe zone in the world. The Alpha there is Blaine Anderson.”

“Alphas are like the chief of the pack, the final authority on everything, including who joins,” Puck said after her. “Which is why that whole get bit by a werewolf become a werewolf thing is basically bullshit. You need an Alpha’s blessing before you can join us if you’re human. It’s actually really complicated but basically if an Alpha decides you’re worthy enough he’ll make you an honorary pack member. We call it ly-kindred. You stay the same except you smell like pack so that anyone who comes sniffing will know who you belong to. It also means that you can be converted and become a full pack member. So you see any old human who gets bit is just that, bit. They’re not automatically going to go wolf.”

“But Kurt did and he’s in Westerville,” Burt put together. “This Anderson guy bit him?” If this Anderson was in charge, a chief or whatever, shouldn’t he have been more damn careful? Full moon or no full moon he’d changed Kurt’s life forever. And yes, even lycan Burt was going to stand behind him but he knew the world (because he knew himself) and it broke his heart that after years of struggle for equality, one careless bite had made Kurt a permanent enemy of it. Puck and Rachel looked at each other again, as if trying to figure out what to tell him and Burt waited. Finally Puck sighed and turned back to him.

“Do you remember that dog Kurt had?”

*~*~*

_Second Night: Columbus_

Santana woke in the dark, and for a moment she did not know what had woken her. Though her ears quickly picked up the sound of a woman’s pitiful whimpering she knew it was not the sound of the cries she heard coming from where the vampire slept that had woken her, for her feet had slid from the bed and carried her halfway to her bedroom door before they registered.

_‘You’re in deep shit Lopez’_ her own cynical nature seemed to mock her as she slipped silently across the hall, pulled by an intangible force that she was happy to do anything but acknowledge. What she couldn’t do was ignore it, but Santana wasn’t sure she’d have wanted to do that in any case. The blond vampire female thrust so suddenly in her care had suffered nightmares since the first night of her arrival; the intensity of which even Santana wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy.

_‘Which she totally is. Vampire, remember?’_

And yet Santana had felt pity (not anything so sentimental or mushy as empathy) for Brittany from the start. It had confused her abuela at first, and as Brittany went from being just an unwanted house guest to something more like a friend that confusion had turned to contempt. 

The hallway was dark but her superior vision allowed Santana to see clearly the figure stood in the doorway of the guestroom where Brittany slept. She knew it was her abuela. Alma Lopez had been alive a long time, born and raised in Spain. She had witnessed the civil war and its subsequent years of slaughter. A survivor of the white terror, Santana knew the old woman had seen things the likes of which she couldn’t even imagine, including the death of many whom she had loved at the hands of vampire’s eager to see Spain fall under Nationalist rule.

The sour scent of hate wafting from the older woman and tickling Santana’s nostrils was only to be expected. She paused behind her abuela, the woman’s back ramrod straight and her hair standing on end as she growled lowly at the vampire female tossing and turning upon the bed within the small bedroom. Brittany let out a loud groan and Alma growled louder, her nails lengthening as she took a step into the darkened room.

Some protective instinct that Santana couldn’t even be bothered to question any longer compelled her to protect the sleeping woman. She moved swiftly, a shadow in the darkness, pulling Alma back from the door and planting herself in between Brittany and the hatred she saw smoldering in her abuela’s eyes.

“Leave her alone, Abuela. Go back to bed,” Santana commanded her, but even a direct order from an alpha did not dissuade the omega woman. Santana was ‘pup’, a child of Abuela’s body, and it didn’t matter that it was second generation. Alma was her _nasa_ , her second mother. The smell of a pup would always cling to Santana’s skin so far as Alma was concerned; which was why it didn’t surprise Santana at all that in older woman’s current state she wasn’t in the mood to listen to commands.

What did surprise Santana however was when the woman hauled off and slapped her so hard she thought it was going to knock her out; because her nasa had just _struck_ her. It took the young woman a stunned moment to reconcile her disbelief with the pain flaring in her cheek. Then, tears springing to her eyes of their own accord, Santana grit her teeth and shook away the pain with an enraged snarl.

“Abuela, what the hell?!”

Alma pointed a shaking finger past Santana to where Brittany was writhing on the bed and sucked in a furious breath.

“How dare you do this in my house” the old woman seethed, her bony chest heaving.

“Do what?” Santana shouted because her cheek was still throbbing from being slapped and the only thing louder than her rage at the moment was her hurt.

“She has the smell of wolf to her.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!”

“ _You_! And the shame you’ve brought to yourself and your poor Nulo’s memory, making that thing in there ly-kindred. _Como te atreves_ , Santana!”

“Abuela, have you lost your mind?” Santana demanded of her, her mouth falling open in shock. “Think about who you’re talking to.”

“ _Veo sus deseos, cachorro._ Do you think I don’t have eyes? I have seen you. You would give yourself to the vampiro. _¡Qué disparate!_ ”

“Let’s pretend for a second that you haven’t taken a one way trip to Batshit Town, and say I did want to mate with a blood sucker and be beaten up and exiled, because it sounds like _so_ much fun. Let’s talk about how I couldn’t do that because I _can’t_ make her ly-kindred Abuela!”

“That is not true.”

“Actually, yeah it is. I’m not a pack Alpha. Britt’s a Vampire. She can’t even be converted. Tell me how this imaginary romance you think I’m having with a leech gets past any of that!” Santana knew all of the reasons why it was impossible to mate with a vampire better than anybody, because that was the whole shitty mess of it all. It wasn’t like Santana had a choice no matter what she did or how she felt. She could be as rebellious as she wanted, but that wouldn’t stop the proverbial fish from asphyxiating in that damn nest with the bird.

“You have heard of the vryloka,” Alma reminded her. “You know that it is said the _odio_ still walk the earth.”

“Okay for starts, the vryloka supposedly died out sometime in some century ago that nobody bothers to remember. Secondly that’s bullshit because shape shifting vampires are just an old wives tale parents told cubs to scare them away from talking to strays. So they’re not walking anywhere and we’re not going to talk about them like they’re real. But as long as we’re on the subject of things that never happened, Britt’s not ly-kindred. You need your head checked for even thinking Shuester would make a _vampire_ kindred to us!”

“It is not _our_ pack, Santana. Even tainted with her vampiro stench, you think it would take me so long to recognize pack when I smell it?” Alma insisted quietly and Santana’s felt a headache coming on. Alma was old, even for a lycan. Maybe she was finally going senile. She had to be if she thought some other pack Alpha had waltzed into town and decided to make a vampire a part of his pack just for kicks.

“Anderson.” Abuela dropped the name like a bomb just as Santana opened her mouth to retort. 

That’s when she figured the old woman really had gone crazy.

“What have you done Santana? What have you done to betray your blood?!”

Oh god Nasa really had lost it hadn’t she?

At that moment Brittany’s whimpers, which had gradually grown louder and louder, escalated into full scale sobs and Santana turned toward her, torn by the demanding urge to see to her and the instinct that told her not to turn her back on the threat in the doorway.

“I haven’t done anything.” Santana stated firmly, layering the words with every ounce of dominance she possessed. “You don’t have to like her, but Brittany is here on our Alpha’s orders and we’re responsible for her until her Coven comes to take her off our hands. We’re on the brink of civil war, Abuela. I know you know what that’s like. I know you don’t want to repeat the experience. So I suggest you go to bed before you do something you regret. Like hurt Balaur’s coven daughter when he’s coming here for her!”

For a moment it did not look like the older woman would listen, her eyes searching Santana’s for the truth for a long moment. Whatever she saw there must have appeased her because her shoulders slumped and she slowly turned and disappeared back down the hall as quietly as Santana had arrived. Santana made sure she heard her bedroom door open and shut again before she turned and stepped into Brittany’s room.

“Santana?” The pleading Santana heard in the blond woman’s voice told her that Britt was conscious, shaken awake from her nightmare. The meek sound of her voice pulled at the strings of a heart Santana wished she could turn to stone. It didn’t. It wasn’t satisfied until she’d crawled into bed beside the other woman and pulled her sweat soaked brow to her breast and held her tightly. Brittany twined slick arms around her torso and clung like a marsupial, her ragged breathing punctuating the silence.

Santana simply held her, stroking her scalp and rocking slightly to the faint sound of humming she didn’t even realize she was making until Brittany began to sing along under her breath. _To you I’d never be cold… Because I feel when I am with you, it’s right…. And the song birds keep singing like they know the score…. I love you I love you I love you, like never before._

She swallowed the lump that had risen in her throat, blinking away the prick of tears she felt unexpectedly. It was just a stupid song comprised of words that only held meaning if they were given it. A lullaby to sooth the frayed nerves of a woman who was so much a child in mind she could forget the impossible cruelty of the world at something as simple as an embrace. Santana couldn’t remember if she’d ever been that innocent. Perhaps that was what made her try so hard to preserve it in Brittany.

It was some Freudian attempt at redemption and it would never mean anything more than that (it couldn’t).

“My dreams were bad.” Brittany whispered in the dark.

“Was it your Sire again?” Santana asked her and Brittany nodded in reply. “He can’t hurt you anymore, Brittany.”

“Why?” the blond asked. “Has he gone away?”

“He’s dead remember.” And from what Brittany had told her of him thank god for that.

“No he’s not.”

Well that was the last thing Santana had expected to hear.

“What do you mean he isn’t dead, Britt? You told me he was killed in a shootout with the police!” The anger was irrational, but it surged nonetheless at the prospect that the monster that had stolen Brittany’s childhood was still out there somewhere.

“I thought he was. There was so much blood and he was hurt so badly. When he never came for me at the hospital I thought he was dead. It’s the only reason he wouldn’t come. He likes my blood too much to give it up.” Brittany peered up at her. “You don’t believe me do you”

“You’re terrified,” Santana’s mind scrambled to come up with reasons why Brittany had to be wrong (she _had_ to be). “You’re letting your dreams get to you. What makes you think he’s alive?”

“Because he told me.” That sent Santana’s heart racing in alarm. Why the hell hadn’t Brittany mentioned this sooner? And how the hell had her nose missed a strange vampire on the premises!

“You’ve _talked_ him?”

“Yeah.”

“Brittany! When?”

“Tonight, yesterday, every night since he came back.”

“In your sleep?” Santana clarified, feeling a surge of immense relief when Brittany nodded. “So it was a dream right? Damn it Brittany, you scared me! It was just a stupid nightmare. It can’t hurt you because it’s not real.”

“Why shouldn’t it be real just because it’s a dream?” Brittany pouted. “It feels real to me.”

“Yeah well… real or not he’s not going to hurt you again okay?” Santana reassured her. “You’ve got me here for protection and then Balaur is sending someone to get you. You’ll get to go home…”

Santana had told her about the envoy that Balaur was sending, but not about the rogue or the body they’d found. She didn’t want to make it harder for the woman to sleep on top of everything else.

“Balaur’s house isn’t home.” Brittany reminded her. “It’s cold. Nobody ever wants to dance unless there’s a party and even then all they want to do is stand there and look good. Only Mike dances with me.” Brittany shifted in her lap and considered her for a long moment before she smiled sadly. “You don’t need to tell me that you would. I know you would. We’d go to the parties and dance all night and when I got hungry I’d probably feed from you, and you’d probably be scared. It’s scary the first time but I’d go slow and I’d kiss you wherever it hurt because I don’t want to hurt you.”

The fear those simple words inspired was bone deep; the revulsion however was only surface shallow and all of it was pointed at herself because there was something inside of her, some tiny grain of perversion that _wanted_ the vampire female to keep talking. Which was why Santana shoved away from her and snarled down at the hurt expression clouding the blonds face, “And I don’t want to be bit by some blood sucker! Just because I decided we could be friends doesn’t mean we’re fucking Romeo and Juliet. You’re a vampire, and yeah that’s not your fault so I guess I felt sorry for you or whatever but it’s _disgusting_ what you do. Don’t come near me with those fangs or I’ll end you. Understand!”

“You think I’m disgusting?” Brittany asked it quietly, but her heart wasn’t breaking quietly at all. Santana could practically hear it screaming, feel Brittany’s pain tugging at her over their bond and… and…

She was in so much shit.

Shaking, Santana leaned down and wrapped her arms around the other woman, clinging tightly as fear and longing created some sort of toxic combination inside of her and made her stomach church. She didn’t deserve it but she was greatful nonetheless when Brittany clung to her, rubbing soothingly at her back and whispered. “It’s okay, Santana.”

No it wouldn’t. But Santana could almost believe that in Brittany’s arms.

“How is anything going to be okay,” she sniffled and Brittany held her tighter.

“It’s like you said. I have you, and since you have me too that means we’re stronger than ever. I’m going to go to the conclave and tell everybody it’s not Kurt killing people. I know you think I’ll get hurt but if I don’t, the council might hurt Kurt and there will be war and Sire will get away with it. He’ll come for me Santana and we’ll just get hurt anyway.”

Santana stiffened in Brittany’s arms, a sudden realization dawning on her.

Balaur _had_ gained something by that body showing up in the Chang’s theater box, an excuse to keep Brittany away from the conclave. Not only that but also to confine her where she could be closely watched. And with grim horror Santana realized that was attributing Balaur with mercy she did not believe the master vampire possessed, because Brittany was after all one unimportant woman. His concern for her had always been an excuse to attack Hummel. The implication that she was a target of the rogue incriminated Hummel on the one hand but did just as much to hurt Balaur’s case on the other. So throwing shade on Hummel couldn’t be the motive behind it.

Protecting Brittany sure as hell wasn’t something Balaur cared about doing so this whole thing… this whole thing had to be about the conclave and keeping Brittany out of it. It would be convenient if a few weeks before it was set to take place Brittany disappeared, even more convenient to blame her demise on the rogue, triple so if Kurt could be implicated somehow.

Santana could see how easy it would be. Balaur was sending people for her and Brittany had no reason not to trust them. She’d be surprised if Brittany ever even made it to the house before they did away with her and dumped her body somewhere that would make it seem like Kurt was responsible.

A growl tore out of the lycan woman’s throat and Brittany’s eyes widened in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this format wasn't too confusing for you. Splitting the days of expedition into two parts just made it easier to understand, though this part feels more like an interlude than a full chapter as a result (hence the title). I figured you'd appreciate shorter if it meant more regular updates. ;) So what did you think? We're building to the big show down and there are pieces to the puzzle strewn every which way. How are your puzzle piecing skills shaping up?


	22. Chapter 20: The Night Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was written for me. So it's really no surprise that it's mostly all Klaine. :) I am however dedicating it to you guys now that it's being shared and I have a special thank you and some news regarding future updates over on my live Journal: http://triddlegrl.livejournal.com/43796.html
> 
> As usual the only beta this has seen are my tired eyes before I dashed off to work this morning so there are probably minor glitches

When Kurt and Blaine returned to the house that night they were met with silent searching gazes. The cubs had been gathered in the kitchen and sat down to bowls of what looked like stew. Lina and Emma sat at either end of the table with Benito and Beth. Chandler and Jeff sprang up from their respective seats on the floor at the sight of them, Chandler rushing forward to envelope Kurt in a hug so fierce it made the taller man stagger. Blaine steadied them, laying a consoling hand on the teenagers back. For once Chandler didn’t appear to have anything to say, simply holding Kurt tightly and trembling against his larger frame.  
  
The strength of Chandler’s emotion left Kurt speechless. When the other children began to crowd them, each pressing a hand or burrowing a forehead against them in some fashion, Kurt quickly became overwhelmed. It was jarring when Jeff and even the adults joined in, a bit creepy if he was honest, but he understood what drove them to do it. He felt each of their lives wrapping around his like thin ropes, the pack bond tangible between each of them. They had suffered with him and Blaine because they were pack. Now they needed to touch and feel them both to be sure that they were whole.  
  
“I'm okay,” Kurt whispered into Chandler’s hair and he was surprised at the prick of tears he felt.  
When he looked up his eyes met Blaine’s. Benito, who had been sitting on Lina's lap when they arrived was now clutching tightly to the alpha, his spindly arms wrapped around Blaine’s neck. He and Blaine shared a smile and Kurt thought for the first time that he understood why having pack might be the best feeling of them all.  
  
Spider appeared suddenly at Blaine’s elbow, his dark face dour as he gestured toward the front of the house with a grunt. Kurt had yet to hear the wizard speak and found his silence far eerier than the spider webs he noticed clinging to the hem of the man’s shirt. Blaine communicated silently with the strange wizard for a moment before he looked to Adam and Wes and considered them.  
  
“Right,” he announced. “Spider and Quinn spotted Hunters a few miles from here.” Kurt felt the tension in the room spike but Blaine was quick to reassure them all. “It's just a patrol. However, it's best if we divert them away from here. We don't want them wandering too close. Adam you and Chandler take Emma and guard the perimeter, Lina will stay with the cubs. Wes, myself, and our protégées will rendezvous with Quinn and divert the hunting party.”  
  
There was an interesting reaction to that, Adam and Wes clearing their throats and Clara out right clutching Blaine's side with a whining whimper. Oddly despite their visible unease no one in the room said a word. Slowly, Kurt realized that if he and Blaine both left it would be leaving the others alone again to wait and wonder about them.  
  
He understood that there wasn’t much choice given the situation. The Hunters had to be handled and Blaine would consider it his duty to do so… but the children. They were so sensitive to each other’s auras, to the stress of negative emotions around them. Kurt was beginning to feel the weight of that responsibility. He and Blaine shouldn't both go, not after the couple of days they'd already had.  
  
“If you don't mind... Alpha,” Blaine's eyes snapped to his as the title left Kurt’s tongue, sounding as unused as it was. Kurt didn't expect to get used to pack customs in a day, but something about using Blaine's title sent a thrill through him. A tiny spark of heat flared between them and he ducked his head as if that would hide his flush. “I think at least one of us should stay and help Lina.”  
  
Blaine considered him for a long moment, obviously not liking the idea of leaving him behind, but he could feel the imbalance within their group as well as Kurt could, better even. In the end Kurt knew that was what would sway him. He would never hurt the children willingly. Finally he relented with a nod.  
  
“Are you going to be okay?” he asked and Kurt knew he was asking so much more than that. Was Kurt regretting already agreeing to be his mate, were the children going to overwhelm him, and was he feeling the same desperate desire for closeness that Blaine was feeling? Yes to the later. He wasn't sure about the other one and no, no he definitely did not regret deciding to join his life with Blaine's. He'd never regret that if he could help it. Part of that life was going to include cubs of their own (no time soon if Kurt could help it… but someday). The thought still did not sit right with him, but he knew it was not something it would be wise to ignore, not given how important it was to their future. He'd known that when he’d decided this was the life he wanted.  
  
“I don't mind,” he replied with a half-smile as the others filed out. “Besides, I better get used to it. Right?” Blaine stared at him for a moment, the heat flaring hotter between them and Kurt found it difficult to swallow with Blaine looking at him like that.  
  
“The others will be waiting for you Alpha.” Lina's voice, which neither of them had heard in days, startled them and Kurt turned to see that the omega female was standing where Spider had once stood, reaching for Benito with an amused smile. _“The first rule of cub rearing Kurt is not to tempt your mate into indecent behavior where there are young eyes.”_ He heard her think and he laughed, a quick burst of sound that had Blaine arching a brow at them both, however he did not question it.  
  
Wordlessly Blaine went to pass Benito to his mother but the young boy tightened his grip around Blaine's neck and shouted a protest so loudly it took them all by surprise. “I have to go now Beni,” Blaine explained to him gently but the boy just clung tighter.  
  
“Come now piccolo. Blaine has a duty to keep us safe.” Lina pried the boy away and his face screwed up in tears. Kurt was startled to feel something press against his leg and he looked down to find that Beth had wrapped her arms around one of his knee and was burying her face against him. All of the children were showing varying degrees of increasing distress, their emotions lapping against his senses like waves. Even the older ones did not look happy that Blaine was leaving them again so soon. He knew then that his decision to stay behind was the right one.  
  
“Would you like to stay with me Beni?” He heard himself offer and he wasn't the only one to blink at surprise in it. But as soon as the words were said he knew that it too was the right decision. He knew the special bond that Blaine and the cub shared, and though Benito’s smell still upset something within Kurt's psyche at times, he wasn't going about to hold something so petty as his scent against him. If everything he thought he understood about bonding and scents was true anyway, Kurt knew he probably smelled like Blaine a fair amount himself and that would be good for the cubs during their Alpha’s absence.  
  
Benito hiccupped and regarded him suspiciously for a long moment. He wiped his tearful blue eyes with his fists and then, to Kurt's relief, extended his arms in the universal symbol for 'up'. Lina transitioned the boy from her arms to his, a soft smile on her face and Kurt grinned back at her a bit fearfully, because now that Benito's arms were wrapped around him like vines he didn't have a clue what to do with him. Hold him all night?  
  
 _“You'll be fine.”_ Blaine thought to him privately, leaning down to brush his cheek against Kurt's before departing an affectionate kiss on Benito's cheek and something in Kurt's stomach turned to warm mush. He wanted to melt into the floor, or wrap himself around Blaine like a blanket and never let go. He resisted the urge to reach for Blaine as he stepped away, disconcerted by the sudden rush of neediness that he felt. He barely managing a nod when Blaine asked the group at large, “You're all good here?”  
  
“Yes Alpha,” Mai was the first to reply, sticking her chin up bravely and Kurt had to grin at the way Calvin and a few of the other older boys hastened to agree, not wanting to be outdone, even as he felt Calvin’s hand slip into his.  
  
“Alright then, remember if something should happen you stick together. We have to take care of each other.” Though Blaine's eyes roved the group Kurt noticed they caught Calvin's and the two shared a silent moment.  
  
 _“Keep an eye on Calvin,”_ Blaine thought to him a moment later. _“He means well but he has a tendency to wander off.”_  
  
Kurt nodded, and with an affectionate rub of young Luke’s head Blaine was gone. Kurt breathed out slowly, trying to convince his quivering insides that _he_ wasn't a child who needed Blaine at his side every moment to feel comfortable. That was quite enough of _that_.  
  
“You look shell shocked,” Lina whispered to him as he carried Benito over to a plush looking couch in the living room. Spider was nowhere to be seen and Kurt thought to himself that he could do without the wizard habit of appearing and disappearing from thin air. He felt odd about being so familiar in a stranger’s house and he found himself wishing again that Blaine would return and set him at ease.  
  
Kurt sighed at himself.  
  
“I feel strange,” he admitted to his friend, unconsciously holding Benito tighter as his familiar scent surrounded them. There was no irritation with the strangely Blaine like scent notes this time and for that at least Kurt could be grateful. If anything he found the familiarity of Benito's smell soothed him. And wasn’t that embarrassing? He’d stayed to help the cubs and _he_ was the one trembling like a leaf, clinging to a child for solace. “I'm not usually so emotional.”  
  
“It has been a hard couple of days. It is only natural to desire the comfort of your dominant. It is nothing to be ashamed of Kurt.”  
  
Oh, he thought to himself. So _he_ hadn't regressed back to a five year old in need of a security blanket. His wolf had. Well, Blaine had things to do and Kurt doubted it would be the last time in their lives together when duty would pull Blaine away from him. He knew for a fact that he was made of sterner stuff than he was currently showing so he straightened his spine and wiped the tears silently streaming out of Benito's big blue eyes, the motion almost cathartic.  
  
“Shh. That's a lot of fuss over nothing you're doing Beni. Blaine will be back. I bet he’s going to be real worried about leaving us here, but we’re all going to be really good for him aren’t we?” Looking at the others he said, “Come on you guys. No more crying. We're all going to do something fun. Calvin?” Kurt watched the boy's head snap up when his name was called, abandoning whatever conspiratorial whispers he and Luke had been trading with a guilt ridden expression.  
  
He was clearly one to keep occupied.  
  
“What would you like to do?”  
  
Calvin narrowed his eyes suspiciously, glancing at the other boys and girls as if he expected one of them to speak up for him before finally sharing a long look with his twin and responding hesitantly, “Could we watch one of Spiders movies? I've never seen one.”  
  
“Yeah, Spider has great movies!” Mai chimed in and the others got braver and nodded eagerly in agreement. Kurt looked to Lina, unsure about rifling through their host’s movie collection without permission but his friend smiled at him and nodded, whispering conspiratorially, “We often let the children watch a film the last night. It is a treat for them. The Fox and The Hound is usually a hit. Blaine is partial to-”  
  
“The Lion King.” Kurt finished with a grin. “Are you guys just big on Disney or is it a parental restriction thing?” For some reason Lina giggled at that.  
  
“We do not have the same concerns as human parents. Sex and violence are a natural part of our lives. I'm sure most parents would prefer their cubs hold off on things like cursing…” Lina mused, “But cubs have the good sense not to repeat what they pick up in front of their elders.”  
  
Clara nudged Calvin and Kurt heard her hiss under her breath, “yeah Calvin” and he smiled.  
  
It faded when he saw the sad expression on Lina’s face as she looked around at all the eager faces of the children watching them and said, “Disney is good because it is usually safe from the judgment and stereotypes of humans. “  
  
Kurt thought back to all of the movies he'd seen in his youth, of werewolves wreaking havoc and gobbling up the public and winced. Disney it was then.  
  
“How about it Beni? Does Fox  & The Hound sound good to you?” he asked and the young boy pursed his lips and shook his head adamantly.  
  
“Kovu!” Benito insisted and Kurt frowned, unsure of what he meant until the blue eyed little boy made his fists into claws and roared. “Lions! I wanna see the lions, Kurt.” Kurt's face split into a broad grin. He knew without having to ask that this was Blaine's influence and it touched something he could hardly describe within him to think of Blaine spending time with Benito and sharing a part of himself he scarcely showed to anyone.  
  
“How does everyone feel about lions?” He asked the group at large and when he received only minimal protests (Luke was pretty sold on the Fox & The Hound) he pulled rank and declared, “Lion King marathon it is.”  
  
By the time the second movie ended the other cubs had fallen asleep curled up, over, and around each other in a pile on the floor. Though Benito had been happy enough to sit with Beth during the movies and sing along with the songs he'd climbed into his mother's lap and fallen asleep there at the end.  
  
He looked angelic in sleep, but Kurt supposed that children usually did. There wasn't a single one of the children (even Calvin) that didn't look like something fragile while they slept, but there was a vulnerability in Benito that seemed to reach at Kurt from depths within himself he had no idea how to chart. He didn't know what it was about _this_ child in particular that made him feel so fiercely protective watching him slumber. Perhaps it was because he counted his mother as a friend and Kurt knew too well now the danger mother and child were in, but Kurt suspected that it had more to do with the fact that in some inexplicable way Benito was Blaine's and what was Blaine's was also his.  
  
He did not even realize a soft growl was rumbling from him until Lina looked up at him. She spoke quietly after a long moment of watching him.  
  
“You do not know what it is to truly fear for them until they are yours,” she said. “My family will come for me... but I know that no matter what happens you will care for him. Won't you?”  
  
It took a moment for Kurt to realize what she was asking and he rebelled at it, not because he wouldn't want to take care of Benito if something terrible happened, but because the very thought of Lina dead was unthinkable and made his wolf want to come tearing out of him.  
  
“Nothing is going to happen to you, Lina,” he insisted. “I promised, remember? You and Benito are safe here. You'll be protected.”  
  
“Kurt, I do not think Blaine will go to war with the order of Hunters for one wolf. Especially the daughter of his enemy.”  
  
“He will if he has to!” Kurt barked in reply. “Because Blaine is a good person. He would never just kick somebody out and let them get killed because it was the easy way out. I _know_ that...” Kurt gulped down his anger and swallowed thickly, trying to rein in his wolf and prevent his body from shifting. He turned and pinned the petite woman beside him with a frank stare. “I wouldn't forgive him if he did that. That's why you told me in the first place isn't it?” Lina’s eyes lowered in guilt, pulling Benito unconsciously closer.  
  
“I'm sorry. I had no right to-”  
  
“Shh.” He batted her apologies away. “Don't ever apologize for trying to stay alive. You had every right.” Lina did not respond. Instead she just tilted her head and considered him.  
  
“Are you still not feeling yourself?” She asked after a while and the question took him off guard.  
  
“You can tell?” He asked, shifting self-consciously.  
  
“You have a natural confidence to you Kurt.” She smiled but the smile was fleeting. “I have been envious of it at times. Sometimes you seem to dominate effortlessly, as if you were born to do so… but there are many sides to you. You are like water, ever changing and yet always the same.”  
  
She reached across their laps and gripped his wrist. At first Kurt only noticed the strange and sudden sense of relief he felt, as if the feeling of Lina’s hand enclosing around his tissue and bone was all he’d been waiting for, permission to release the growing ball of tension in his gut, permission to let go of everything. He relaxed, and it was only then that he noticed he’d been kneading the couch; nails extended a fraction and tearing holes in the cushion.  
  
~*~*~  
  
Kurt knew the others were returning when they were still some distance away, before Blaine even reached out to tell him so. His wolf just seemed to know his alpha was returning and now that he was and the prospect of danger had passed Kurt expected the unease he’d felt plaguing him all evening to rest. Only it didn’t.  
  
He paced the floor until he could smell them enter the yard, back stiffening and heart leaping in alarm when he distinctly caught the scent of blood. Lina’s nose wasn’t as good as his so she stared at him in confusion as he strode for the kitchen but stayed put when he instructed her to stay with the children and stay on guard.  
  
When he reached the back door the sight that greeted him was thankfully not the grisly scene he’d feared. Wes was being held up by Adam and Blaine, hobbling on one leg while the other bled profusely from an angry looking wound on his calf. Quinn rushed ahead of the three men into the house, brushing impatiently past Kurt as she headed to fetch her medical supplies.  
  
“What happened?” Kurt asked them when they reached the doorway and he nearly had a heart attack when a very male very unexpected voice responded right in his ear.  
  
“Hunters are now using vampire venom on their bullets.” Kurt glared at Ian as the wizard gestured for Blaine and Adam to seat Wes in the kitchen and the small party stumbled its way inside. Kurt followed, watching the two men lower Wes into a chair as Quinn returned, medical bag in hand. He could see the wound closely now and he had to be thankful that eating in the wild had accustomed him to gruesome sights before now. The bullet wound in Wes’ leg looked almost clean in comparison to feeding off a carcass. Still there was a lot of blood and Wes looked to be in terrible pain.  
  
“I’m fine,” Wes insisted bogusly, attempting to get up. “Where’s Emma? Is she alright? I heard her scream.”  
  
“She’s with Jeff and Chandler. We need someone keeping guard and I didn’t want her getting the cubs all riled up. She screamed, _idiot_ because you jumped in front of me like a moron and got yourself shot.” Blaine reprimanded him, but Kurt heard the tenderness in his gruff voice, saw the way Blaine clutched at his Beta’s shoulders and held him still while Quinn worked with such obvious affection it only brought home what a close call it must have been. And no wonder. Apparently Wes had jumped in front of Blaine to protect him.  
  
Kurt couldn’t help the way his eyes flew to Blaine and roved over him, though the Alpha’s focus remained rightly on Wes.  
  
He appeared fine to the naked eye but Kurt still wanted desperately to pull him aside and catalog every scratch and bruise, to make sure he was as whole as he appeared outwardly. He suppressed the need, not wanting to be in the way as Quinn saw to the wound and Ian conferred quietly with them, but tension coiled tighter and tighter in his gut.  
  
“She’ll be fine.” Blaine continued to reassure Wes. “And when she can see for herself that you’re alright she’ll calm down. If you had any sort of decency you’d take her to mate and stop torturing yourselves.”  
  
“You’re kidding right?” Wes scowled at him. “Blaine, you are the last person who can tell me that. The very _last_.”  
  
“They're getting smarter,” Adam growled out in frustration, pacing across the kitchen. “I suppose it was too much to hope they'd never figure out about the vampire venom.”  
  
“It took them a few centuries.” Wes hissed as Quinn sanitized the wound with something that reeked heavily of alcohol. It did not mix well with the tainted blood in the wound. Kurt wasn't the only one to plug his nose and blink watering eyes as a foul odor permuted the room. Wes gritted his teeth, sweat beading on his forehead as he rode out a wave of pain. His voice was gruff when he finally panted, “Something’s changed. We've protected that secret for hundreds of years. Someone had to tell them. So who, and why now?”  
  
“I wouldn't put it past Balaur,” Adam grunted but Ian shook his head in denial.  
  
“The fact that your two races are somewhat toxic to each other is not information the vampir have ever wanted in Hunter hands.” The wizard mused. “No, I suspect that a wizard is behind this.”  
  
“That's Guild knowledge.” Blaine dropped the words like a weight and silence fell over the room. “Why would one of the council sell us out to the Hunters?”  
  
Kurt turned suspicious eyes on the Merlin as one by one the others looked to the wizard with varying degrees of horror and confusion.  
  
He might be the Merlin but Kurt had not forgotten Ian's confessions in the cave or his mistrust of the wizard’s intentions. It wasn’t even that Kurt thought Ian was a bad guy necessarily. The thing was, Kurt didn’t think Ian knew how to fight for any side but his own. He’d see to his own ends to all their expenses and Kurt couldn’t have that. Not if Blaine was going to be the sacrifice.  
  
Blaine and Ian held each other’s gaze for a long tense moment, Blaine's eyes asking questions and compelling the wizard to answer. After what seemed like forever Ian sighed.  
  
“Because there is the thought that the world is in need of new governance,” he finally answered. “But those are matters that can perhaps be reserved for a time with more privacy.”  
  
Kurt stiffened and straightened his spine, quelling the quivering of his belly as he glared at the wizard. Though Ian's inflection had not changed, Kurt thought he saw Ian’s quicksilver gaze flicker to him. He felt suddenly as if he were a child being excluded from the grown up talk.  
  
“The children have been fed. We have not. You can explain while we eat,” Blaine commanded softly and Ian nodded, glancing again to Kurt and then pointedly towards the door of the living room where the children lay sleeping with Lina at guard. Kurt swore his hair almost stood on end, gearing up to tell the old man a thing or two but Blaine seemed to sense his intention and before Kurt could say any of the scathing things he wanted to the alpha had laid a hand on his arm and the fire on his tongue just seemed to die.  
  
Blaine turned to Quinn and instructed, “When you're done with Wes, would you check in with Jeff and the others? They'll need help keeping guard.” Quinn nodded, smoothing out the bandage she'd wrapped tightly around Wes’s leg. She stood and Kurt only noticed that she was armed when she withdrew a small black pistol from her vest, a grim look upon her face as she shared a meaningful look with Blaine.  
  
She then turned to Kurt briefly and asked, “How is Beth doing?”  
  
“She's asleep with the others. We had a sing off courtesy of the Lion King. They're all fine.” The lines of her mouth softened just the slightest at that news, before she nodded and strode for the back door. Kurt watched her go, struck numb by the sight of the gun in her hands and the sudden startling realization that she could walk out the door and not return.  
  
“The gun is a last resort. Quinn is human. The Hunters would hesitate before harming a civilian” Blaine murmured in his ear and though Kurt knew it was a slim protection at best, he found Blaine's words reassuring. Something about having Blaine close and feeling the warmth of his steady hand against his shoulder was enough to calm Kurt's jumping nerves. Perhaps that was why he followed Blaine quietly to the stove and helped him reheat the stew that had gone cold in the pot. He ignored Ian's shrewd gaze as he handed Adam a dish and fetched a cushion from the living room to help Wes keep the weight off his leg.  
  
Upon his return the conversation died quickly, Adam blushing at the sight of him and Wes grinning from ear to ear like he'd just been told Christmas had come early. Blaine's expression was tight and Kurt couldn’t shake the feeling they’d been talking about him, but when Blaine waved for him to come sit beside him Kurt went without hesitation. Blaine smiled when Kurt was beside him and when the alpha took his hand and laced their fingers together Kurt began to feel something unfurl slow and hot in his chest.  
  
“I'm sorry I couldn't be with you tonight Kurt” Blaine apologized quietly as the others began to eat. “That must have been hard.”  
  
Terrible, Kurt wanted to say. He wanted to drop his head against Blaine's shoulder and tell him how anxious he'd been, how nothing had felt right and all he'd needed in the world was the feel of Blaine's hand in his and his warmth pressed against his side... but he didn't. He felt too silly. Blaine had a job after all, and Kurt had always been an independent sort of person. Wolf or no wolf he was embarrassed by how much he'd needed Blaine that night.  
  
“It was nothing.” He tried to wave Blaine's words away. “You're the one who went out and risked your life. All I did was sit around having a comfy night in watching Disney movies.”  
  
“It wasn't nothing,” Blaine replied, allowing no room for dispute. “You saw a need and you filled it, at expense to yourself. You have no idea what that meant to the children, to me, knowing that you'd do that for them. You never fail to amaze me. I'm proud of you Kurt. Even if I worried sick about you the entire time. How are you feeling?”  
  
Kurt didn't dare look at any of the others as he heard spoons scraping the bottom of bowls in the telltale silence that followed. He knew they were all eavesdropping but he couldn’t quite bring himself to care. Kurt’s whole face was flushed as he practically glowed under Blaine's praise. He was almost certain had he been in his wolf body just then he'd have embarrassed himself by wagging his tail.  
  
“Relieved mostly,” he answered with as much dignity as he could muster with a red face and a mouth that couldn't stop trying to break into a stupid grin. “I'm glad you didn't make this a Shakespearian romance and go dying on me the day I finally decided I'd keep you.” Blaine grinned in amusement and Kurt narrowed his eyes at him. “Don't go doing that. I’m serious. I'd be very upset with you.” He meant it to be a tease but he was surprised to hear his voice warble and to find that he’d trapped Blaine’s hand between his own without his permission and gripped it tight like a lifeline.  
  
Blaine laid his palm over the place where Kurt's hand clasped his and squeezed. It wasn't a promise, it wasn't even much of a reply but it was inexplicably satisfying. For a time after that there was just them, the comfortable silence between them and the steadying pressure of their hands clasped together. It was sleepy and warm, so much so that Kurt wasn't even embarrassed when Blaine lifted one hand to begin feeding him spoonfuls of stew. He hadn't eaten since before the cave, a fact forgotten in the stress of the evening. But Blaine had remembered and perhaps the simplicity of the act was what made Kurt feel the most cared for.  
  
“The life of a Pack Alpha is dangerous Mr. Hummel, especially the life of _this_ one.” Ian's voice shattered the quiet, calling the room to attention and Kurt had to tear his eyes away from Blaine's. “You've chosen a poor mate indeed if you were looking for a cushy life without worry.”  
  
Kurt narrowed his eyes at the perceived slight and Blaine's hand tightened in his.  
  
“Kurt _has_ chosen to be with me Ian. It's done. Let it rest.”  
  
“Oh is it done?” Ian asked with a quirk of his eyebrows. “My apologies, I'd expected your bite to be bigger. One practically needs a microscope to see it.”  
  
Adam chortled into his soup and even Wes's lip twitched as Blaine cast a dark look around the table.  
  
“Kurt and I will consummate our claim in our own time. We've agreed to wait,” he replied and Ian wasn't the only one to roll his eyes in exasperation.  
  
“You would,” Wes muttered under his breath. “For god’s sake, Blaine, why?”  
  
“I just want it put on the record that this was all his idea.” Kurt murmured and Blaine pinched him under the table. Kurt jerked his arm away, glaring and Blaine grinned back at him. He was tempted for a moment to do something equally juvenile but Ian was watching them too closely; Kurt didn’t want to give the old man actual reason to dislike him.  
  
“Nevertheless, we've decided to wait,” Blaine tried and failed to suppress his grin as Kurt tried to burn holes into him with his eyes. “And there are more important things to discuss. Like how a centuries old secret made its way into Hunter hands.” It amazed Kurt how quickly sobriety could fall over a table.

All eyes were on Ian.  
  
“It is not chance that brought me here today, Blaine, you know that.”  
  
“I don't think chance is ever a part of the reason you visit me, Ian.”  
  
“Indeed.” Ian leaned forward, steepling his hands. They sat in silence while the old man considered the four of them. The moment stretched so long Kurt felt it had begun to scream with the tension before Ian finally spoke again. “I had hoped to protect you and your kin by keeping your history as shrouded in myth as possible, but the time for secrecy has past. The world has changed and too many of the wrong people believe enough in the legends that it no longer matters whether or not they have proof. They want the crown and they will come for it, with the intent to destroy you in their search.”  
  
“My god,” Adam sucked in a breath. “So it’s true. I mean I knew some of it had to be true but… It’s really _all_ true, about the sword and the crown… they exist?”  
  
“They do.” Ian’s eyes twinkled with something strangely close to pride. “As did the grail Galahad and Sir Percival brought back from their quest.”  
  
“Excuse me, are we talking about the Holy Grail here... the one Jesus drank from?” Kurt gapped. He might not have been very religious but he'd not been born under a rock either. He liked Monty Python as much as the next person so he was familiar with the legend but he'd never thought the grail _actually_ existed. He didn't know why, come to think of it. Why not? Everything else had truth to it.  
  
“While the holiness of the grail is certainly in debate, it is without doubt an object of power. It, like all such objects, was created by a wizard, this one the most powerful healer to come from my line. Not to mention the most infamous.”  
  
“Jesus Christ,” Kurt huffed, the puff of breath tickling his brow. Ian chortled in amusement.  
  
“One and the same. The grail, like the sword and the crown was forged by magic. A wizard never creates an object of power that can be used willy-nilly, not if they have any sense, but the grail has the unique purpose to make right that which has become tainted or worn with age. The full powers of the grail can only be used by the one the grail chooses. Though many men have held it, only Galahad has ever passed its test. If you or I were to drink from the grail it would heal our wounds, cure our disease, and minimize our aging.  
  
“For Galahad, the grail could have made him like the man who created it- like a god, with the power to defeat death. But I suppose that is the secret of the grails test, not to crave the power it could grant you. Galahad chose to die as all men must, and let his friends find their natural ends as well. Upon his death the grail came into my keeping. A few years ago the council decided to change the place where it was hidden. It was meant to be kept safe but accessible for Galahads return.”  
  
“Only it's not safe now,” Blaine guessed when Ian fell silent and the wizard nodded. “So if I have this straight, the Hunters have knowledge they shouldn't have and the grail was stolen right out from under the Guild's nose.”  
  
“I don't know much about the Wizard Guild,” Kurt ventured to say. “But it sounds to me like you have an awfully hard time keeping track of things.”  
  
Ian turned cool gray eyes to his and stared into him. Kurt felt their weight on his chest like someone had come along and sat on him.  
  
“Aye,” Ian agreed softly after a time, much to Kurt's surprise. “There is a traitor in the Guild. I knew there was discord, but I failed to see just how deeply it ran until it was too late to do anything about it. Now, the very guild I set up to protect our world until Arthurs coming may be the instrument of its destruction.”  
  
“I don't understand.” Kurt wrinkled his brow as he tried to make sense of what Ian was telling them. “Isn't that a bit... dramatic?” When the others looked at him in confusion Kurt had to fight not to fidget. “It's just that you said the grails powers were to heal. How could the Guild use it to destroy everything?”  
  
“You mistake me Mr. Hummel. I do not think the entire guild has turned against us, just a few. But a few is too many. When Arthur died there was chaos. People forgot the ideals of Camelot and the world returned to its old ways. The Clans returned and the strong prevailed at the expense of the meek. Humans suffered the worst. Something had to be done but there was no sign yet of Arthur.  
  
“Blaine's ancestor, Andrew Macmorrow, showed promise. Clan born, much like Arthur himself, but with the right nudging he began to see what the world could be if we sought to help one another rather than grind each other into the dust. I gave him the sword but discovered he could not wear the crown. As much as I had hoped he might be Arthur, the first attempt nearly killed him and we knew we'd be fools to try another. With the help of Excalibur however he helped me form the Guild and defeat those who opposed it.  
  
“I would have given Andrew governance over the guild but he did not think it wise. I agreed with him in the end. Without the aid of the crown he would be stretched too thin, trying to keep four different species of people at peace. It was decided that humans would be allowed to govern themselves much as they had tried to do throughout the centuries, vampires would answer to their coven heads and lycans to regional alphas. To oversee them all we elected the council.  
  
“It has been that way ever since. But there has always been resistance. There will always be those who resent the hand of the guild and seek to return the world to the dark ages. And now, I fear, there are those who have become too comfortable in their elected positions of leadership. There are some who would make themselves the king that Arthur is promised to be and that is what I fear our traitor, or traitors as the case may be, hope to do.”  
  
“And it's possible?” Wes asked. “You wouldn't be here if it wasn't. There are always would be conquerors. Some get closer than others but in the end no one really can rule them all can they. Except Arthur. So you have to be worried that somebody could actually do it.”  
  
“Arthur was just a man Mr. Montgomery. A man with the right tools. The crown was made so that only he could wear it for that very reason... but it is only magic. All magic can be undone. Even mine. If a wizard is strong enough and willing to pay the price a way to overpower the crowns protections could be found. Many have dabbled in theory....”  
  
“But nobody's come close right?” Blaine asked, his worry making Kurt feel off balance, like the room was tilting. “I mean, you're the most powerful wizard there is.”  
  
“That is a matter of opinion. Nevertheless, it's not necessary that a wizard be more powerful than I, just powerful enough to twist my spells in a direction that pleases them. One wizard came too close. He almost destroyed your family Blaine before he was stopped.”  
  
“Dagan?” Blaine stilled and turned to him when the name left Kurt’s lips, a question in his eyes that Kurt was not prepared to answer. He couldn’t without prompting more questions in Blaine’s mind about Lina. Kurt swallowed and asked Ian, “That was his real purpose in coming here wasn’t it?”  
  
“Yes. Dagan convinced Julian that immortality was not enough, that not only should he wear the crown but that he _needed_ it to preserve his line. He promised that the power it would grant him could help him bring back his lost mate. Dagan knew the key to unlocking the crown was Arthur’s blood.” Ian looked to Blaine then, lines tightening his mouth, his eyes gone just a bit far away as his voice lowered. “You know what they did then. They used the students here like lab rats and your brother, Cooper, was the final test subject. They meant to make him a weapon, invulnerable to Balaur and strong enough to wear Arthur’s crown. ”  
  
“They made a monster instead.” Blaine’s voice was flat but the hand that rested on the table had turned to a white knuckled fist, and something very dark was seeping over that place where he and Kurt connected, like spilled oil in an ocean and Kurt shivered.  
  
“Yes. That they did.” For a moment something glittered in Ian’s eyes and then the wizard blinked and it was gone, his tone brisk and efficient as he straightened his back in his seat. “They also came closer than I dared let anyone realize to achieving their ends. That is a secret I thought Dagan took to the grave but I was incorrect on that and many other scores. Dagan had a nephew, a boy about your age, and it seems that before his death he imparted the boy with some knowledge of his work. I have kept an eye on Mr. St. James throughout his schooling and though he shows remarkable talent in many areas of magic I have done my best to keep him grounded. Perhaps again I am to blame if what I suspect he has done is true. I did not grant him the same fairness I granted you Blaine. The sins of the father are not the sins of the son.”  
  
Blaine did not answer. Kurt could feel that cloying inky blackness spreading between them and he did not like it, tightening his hand in Blaine’s and resolving to end the discussion as quickly as possible and see that it was banished back to wherever it had sprung from.  
  
“So this St. James, you think he’s the one who stole the grail? You think he’s trying to finish what his uncle started?”  
  
“I do. If only to prove he can and that he should not have been overlooked. I believe that our traitor recruited him for just that purpose and is using him to achieve his own ends.”  
  
Adam quirked a brow. “So you think you know which of the Guild members it is then?”  
  
“I have reasonable suspicion. There are a few in the Guild who have begun to fear vampires as demons and lycans as beasts that should be controlled, Figgens chief among them. I believe he and several others to be working with human extremist groups.”  
  
The conservationist party?” Kurt guessed. “But why would anyone side with them, they hate subhumans.  
  
“The HCP is pushing the notion that wizards should not be classified as _sub_ human, as we are simply men of power. He and many humans are coming to believe that our power should be used to prosper and preserve humanity, while keeping the world safe from dangerous or demonic forces.”  
  
Silence descended over the table and Kurt clutched Blaine's hand tightly in his. He raised his eyes and caught Adam staring back at him, a worried frown turning his lips. Neither of them spoke, but Kurt knew that every man gathered there was thinking the same thing. The world was turning against them.  
  
“Blaine,” Blaine raised his head slowly as Ian spoke his name, voice heavy with regret. “The time is coming when we will no longer be able to depend on the goodwill of men. There will be no reason. There will be no compromise. You will be hunted and exterminated unless you fight back, but you cannot do it alone. The packs must come together as they once did, under Arthur—”  
  
“But Arthur is not here, Ian!” Blaine barked. “I know what you want me to do and the answer is no. Why would the other pack leaders follow me? I'm young enough to be half of their sons.”  
  
“They will not come together on their own Blaine they need a rallying point.”  
  
“Find another.”  
  
“Who other Blaine? Give me the name of the man or woman who you think could do what you were born to do and I shall darken their door, and hope that they have more sense than an ostrich! The war is coming whether you like it or not.”  
  
“If the humans see us gathering an army it will _bring_ war to us, I guarantee you that! My responsibility is to my pack Ian, whatever Arthur's was, mine belongs to them.”  
  
“And what of the students? Will you send them home to a certain death? You may be able to protect those who inhabit your land but what will you say to the children who call this place sanctuary when their families are murdered and there is no home for them to return to? How long will it be before you have to turn away those who seek asylum here and how long before you are surrounded by your enemies with too many mouths to feed and the recourses of the forest waning? Don't be a fool boy.”  
  
“I'm not a boy, Merlin! Not any longer.” Blaine rose so suddenly to his feet he overturned the bowl they'd been sharing from and it fell to the floor with what seemed a painfully loud clatter. No one spoke. None of them seemed to dare to breathe. Blaine looked around for a moment like a man who had just woken up, unsure of where he was, before he pushed away from table.  
  
“This conversation is done.”  
  
And so it seemed it was.  
  
~*~*~  
  
Blaine had Kurt and Lina wake the children and prepare them for travel and called the others back from their guard detail. With Wes injured it was no longer safe to spend the night and Blaine wanted to get them back home as soon as it was possible. Ian’s news had spread a shadow over them all.  
  
He hardly remembered the drive back. The wizard’s warnings replayed over and over in his mind, and it wasn’t just Ian shouting up in there.  
  
He could hear Christian reminding them all that that the only thing separating an enemy from a friend was understanding and they should do their part to breach that gap between lycan’s and humans. He could hear Cooper insisting that they rally with the other packs for they were by nature stronger than humans and in numbers strongest of all and Connor joking that they’d kill each other long before the humans did searching for the dominant in that seething mass of alphas. His mother would have wrung her hands and said nothing, believing that silence was an omega’s place and that whatever the alpha’s around her decided would be best. Brianne and Brea, they’d have been scared but eager to be a part of things and do whatever part was required of them. They’d have wanted to use the forest as a sanctuary and go from students to warriors in a blink of an eye and with the kind of naïve perspective toward war that could only be had when one had never taken a life.  
  
Julian, well Blaine knew what Julian would have wanted. He’d have wanted war and the dominion over the other packs. He’d have wanted to show his might with the sword and to hold his power with the crown and it was that very desire that had destroyed their family. Julian was the reason none of the others were there to feel or say _anything_ , why there was nothing but torn threads and empty spaces where their bonds had once been tied them. Blaine would not do it. The pack was his family now and he would not sacrifice the only family he had left to fight an unwinnable war. They’d hide in the forest if they had to, live like true wolves if it came to that, but he absolutely would not feed them to the same beast that had swallowed the rest of his family.  
  
It was early morning when they finally returned and saw the children to their beds and dragged their exhausted bodies to find their own. He saw Lina and Benito to a guest room and when the sleepy child clung to him Kurt agreed to stay with them. Wes disappeared with Emma, no doubt to be nursed by her more than capable hands, and even distracted Blaine noticed the way Chandler stared after Adam, his longing plain for the world to see.  
  
Adam ought to just claim him, Blaine thought as he made his way to his room. Time was after all so very short and they were on the cusp of change. Life might never be the same again, Blaine thought to himself as he wandered finally approached his quarters, unsure how long he’d been wandering the empty halls of Anderson house lost in his own thoughts. What was a thing like Chandlers age then? What was anything when they could be happy together with whatever time they had left?  
  
“I’m glad you think that.” Kurt’s voice, coming from within the darkened room, startled Blaine. The growl tearing out of his throat was interrupted however by Kurt’s lips on his, stealing his breath, their warm bodies pressing desperately together as if by gravitational pull.  
  
 _“I thought you were sleeping with Lina?”_ He could barely manage to think it, so Blaine definitely didn’t have what it took to separate their mouths, to stop his hands gripping Kurt’s waist and holding on to the warm feel of his skin and the solidity of his bones. Kurt was the one to pull away and take a deep ragged breath, like surfacing after being underwater.  
  
“I needed to make sure you were alright.” He said. “I’ve needed it all night. Blaine I’ll always need to know that you’re okay.”  
  
“I…” Blaine’s mind was blank. He had no idea _what_ he was, except young… and unsure. Too young to lead an army and too unsure to be the person an entire people group depended on against extinction and… and that’s when he realized what he was, was scared. Blaine’s eyes stung and he blinked them in anger at himself, and then in horror as everything crumbled and tears began to leak unbidden out of his eyes and his throat clog with cries.  
  
How on earth were any of them going to survive when he was the Alpha and at the first hint of the peril to come he broke down like some child? He wished he _was_ a child again, that Conner was there to banish his fears, or his mother there to hold him. How sad was he, nearly in his thirties and all he wanted right now was his mother. Or _any_ of the others for that matter. At that moment Blaine would have given anything to trade places. He wished desperately that it had been any of the others to survive but him. Then maybe the pack would have a chance at survival.  
  
He’d never had Coopers drive, or Conner’s strength or been as smart as Christian. He’d always been too soft inside, too weak to—  
  
The breath left his body as Kurt suddenly pushed him back against the door and Blaine instinctively brought his hands up to push back. Kurt caught them in a vise like grip and then his voice seemed to rip through Blaine's consciousness.  
  
 _Stop it!_  
  
It wasn’t Kurt’s plea but the will behind it that made everything scream to a halt within Blaine. For a moment he felt suspended, held tight by an invisible hand at a great height. He did not feel like flesh and blood anymore. He could swear that he was glass, blown by Kurt's heat and spun by his motion, and that Kurt would be the making of him.  
  
As such he knew he could shatter at a stroke but he almost welcomed it, for even such terrible fragility as that was a welcome price to pay for the beautiful clarity it brought. This he knew, was what they were made to give each other, what he would try to make Kurt feel every day for the rest of their lives, what so many alphas feared in their deepest parts the craving of. This was what it felt like to submit to somebody elses will. Kurt said stop and the world simply did. In a moment of brilliance he let go and Kurt held the world in the palm of his hands.  
  
“Just stop. Blaine I'm with you… for _you_ and it doesn't matter whether we die today, tomorrow, or a hundred years from now I'll still be with you.” Blaine shivered as Kurt's fingers slowly unwound from around his wrists, the taller man breathing heavily as if he had run a race, the effort of dominating him visible. “I'm scared Blaine, but more than the thought of death... the thought of being hated and hunted...” Kurt's hands slid down his chest and wrapped around his waist. He stepped in close, lowering his brow to Blaine's bare shoulder, lessoning the difference in their height.  
  
“What scares me is that you can't believe in us, because you don't believe in you as strongly as I do.” The warmth of Kurt’s breath tickled Blaine's flesh as they breathed in and out in tandem. He trembled as Kurt's nose nuzzled along the curve of his shoulder, down his collar bone, and then up the column of his neck. The jolt of pleasure they both felt was so strong when Kurt paused over his pulse that neither of them would have been shocked had electricity crackled around them.  
  
Blaine took in a shuddering breath as he felt Kurt's lips close against the sensitive skin, his warm wet tongue swiping slowly and languidly against the place where Blaine’s blood coursed strongest. There were no teeth, nor any hint of a threat, in the movement- they he had forced Blaine to a stop he would never force this- just a gentle loving stroke. Blaine knew it for the plea it was.  
  
Kurt pulled away with a soft groan and panted softly. He raised his head and looked into Blaine's eyes and Blaine saw that they were soft and longing, despite the intensity of their focus.  
  
“I don't need you to be the bravest, just brave.” Kurt’s voice was almost as soft as a whisper as he spoke. “And I don't need you to be the strongest, just as strong as I know you are.”  
  
Blaine could hardly breathe. It was as if Kurt was pinning him to the door with his eyes alone. He wouldn't have thought that Kurt sliding to his knees would make him feel such a sudden sense of release, as if somewhere inside a rope had snapped or a chain link come undone, but it did. When Kurt looked up at him again the wolf was behind his eyes, their electric blue intelligent and focused but content, for the wolf was exactly where he felt he needed to be and had no fears.  
  
Blaine's wolf stirred inside and he did not try to resist it, for in one single gesture Kurt had tossed him back the world and he had caught it with confidence because what had he to fear? His world was Kurt and Kurt was for always. He reached out, running his fingers in the soft strands of Kurt's brown hair and breathed deeply in and out, and he thought to himself that his world was quite a beautiful thing.  
  
Blaine had only a moment to marvel at how amazing his mate was until some primitive instinct raised its ugly head and reminded him that Kurt wasn't exactly his mate yet. Some other alpha could still swoop in and claim what belonged to him.  
  
He tilted his head, considering the line of Kurt's back and the shape of his thighs where they were taught with the strain of kneeling. He recalled the taste of his skin, the smell of it, and the feel of it against him. He could feel the wildness fit to burst out of his skin and he was sure that Kurt could see it in his eyes but Kurt was no longer afraid of the wolf. He was unflinching as Blaine lowered himself, bringing them eye to eye.  
  
“Kurt?”  
  
“Yes.” Kurt’s voice was eager and pleasingly breathless. Blaine's mouth slid into a lecherous smile and Kurt might have returned it, but Blaine couldn't be sure as he couldn't tear his eyes away from the heat of Kurt’s gaze.  
  
“I want to fuck you,” he admitted baldly and Kurt closed his eyes with a quiet moan. “Get on the bed.”  
  
It was incredibly arousing how quickly Kurt rushed to comply with that order and also sobering for Blaine because even if his instincts were all but screaming at him to pin Kurt to the bed and assert his control by making him take it, underlining all of that was simply love and the desire to take care of the most precious thing he’d ever been granted.  
  
Blaine stood and walked toward the bed, greedily drinking in the sight of Kurt splayed out on his sheets, splashes of moonlight from the window bathing his skin and turning his eyes almost to the color of ice.  
  
“I can’t let you go… the thought of someone else touching you… I’d go crazy Kurt. I want to pin you to my bed and cover you in my bite.” Blaine straddled him instead groaning dirtily into Kurt’s mouth when he almost instantly closed the distance between them and captured Blaine’s lips and thrust their clothed erections against each other.  
  
“Do it,” Kurt panted against his lips, his hands sliding almost desperately down Blaine’s chest and fumbling with the ties on his shorts. He was so impatient that a second later he abandoned the strings and just drove his hands inside the elastic band, gripping the firm flesh of Blaine’s ass as they ground together. “Hold me down and fuck me.”  
  
Blaine lurched forward, thrusting hard against Kurt and the effort it took to pull himself back was almost violent. Kurt whined low at the loss of contact and tried to pull him back.  
  
“Blaine please.”  
  
“Kurt I—”  
  
“Blaine!” Kurt all but wailed. “If you say you can’t I think I actually will punch you in the face.”  
  
“I won’t.”  
  
“That’s not any better you asshole,” Kurt growled at him and despite how painfully hard he was and the way he was shaking with the effort not to just pounce on Kurt and be done with it Blaine found himself grinning.  
  
“You’re moon hot, and I—”  
  
“I can’t seem to get you to give it to me so how hot can I be?”  
  
“— care about you too much to claim you when you’re under the influence.”  
  
“Blaine,” Kurt let out a long suffering sigh and let his head drop to the pillow. “Earlier it was Ian, now it’s the moon. I just… do you not want this?”  
  
“Kurt of _course_ I want this, but I can’t… I can’t tie you to a life that you’ll end up regretting. I won’t take the chance that its Ian’s charms or the moon talking when you say you want this life. Especially not now.” Kurt fell silent at the seriousness of his tone and Blaine felt his throat tighten as the shadow of the evening returned, the dark prospect of the future returning like a black cloud to hover over them both.  
  
“I need you Kurt…” Blaine admitted, closing his eyes tight. “But I keep asking myself how I can condemn you to a life of blood, death and fear. Do you understand what is going to happen if the humans turn against us? Even if we survive the conflict we will lose so much, we may even wonder why we wanted to live in the first place. I don’t want you to have to live like that. You could still go home. You could go back to your old life and hide.”  
  
“Blaine…” Kurt reached up to rest his fingers lightly on the edge of his jaw. “I can’t just go home and pretend I never knew any of you while bills like Show and Tell get passed and history repeats itself. I told my dad once that I felt like that bill had a Nazi era feel to it and now we know. I’ve never lived through anything that terrible or on that scale. I won’t pretend like I know what I’m doing or I’m not terrified, I just know I’m still alive and I have to fight for the things that make that life worth living… for me, for you, and for everyone else. What’s the point otherwise? I think I could die for that. I don’t know... I’ve never died. I imagine that when I do, knowing I had whatever time with you I could grab ahold of would mean I could go with only one regret, that I didn’t manage to grab more of it. Now no more of this. Clearly you need to rest so you can start thinking clearer. Come here.”  
  
Kurt pulled Blaine close in a hug, Blaine’s weight settling over him and they lay together saying nothing more until sleep pulled at them, for there seemed nothing to be said beyond that. Kurt was in his arms, held tightly and held close, and it felt as if nothing in the world could intrude on the perfection of that feeling. Not a bomb, not a bullet, not a hundred clashing swords or the end of time itself. His lips turned up in a slow smile.  
  
“Why the grin?” Kurt asked.  
  
“I was just thinking,” Blaine murmured. “I love you Kurt. Thank you for understanding.”  
  
“I love you too Blaine,” Kurt burrowed closer to him before he said on a sleepy yawn “But you’ve hit your head if you think you’re off the hook. You’re going to make an honest wolf of me before sundown tomorrow or my name isn’t Kurt Hummel.”  
  
Blaine chuckled but did not reply; confident that in this he would not be moved for Kurt had reminded him that he was strong. In Kurt’s arms, Blaine could believe it.  
  
Blaine slept peacefully that night. Kurt’s mind, as it had often done in the past, churned up shadows and images that upon morning he would not be able to differentiate between dreams and visions.  
  
~*~*~  
  
 _He was not the same. The body he was in was young, supple, and soft in places he had never been soft, round in places he had never been round and his head was weighted down by a thick curtain of inky black hair that the breeze teased against his cheeks and lips with frustrating consistency.  
  
But he could not be angered. Who could be angered on a day like this day, with the sun shining bright upon him and when he wore freedom on his back like wings. He moved seamlessly within the crowd of tourists, the city thick with them, loving each of their faces as he passed them for their presence allowed him to slip out of the watchful gaze of his guard and meet the young man beside him.  
  
“I want you to stick your hand in its mouth, James, and tell me then that you love me,” he heard himself say in rapid Italian as he pulled the dark haired man up onto the portico beside him. The man was older in his eyes than the few years between them permitted, but they glittered with mirth and something possessive as they stared back at Kurt who was not Kurt.  
  
The man was dangerous, as all wild things were, but he called and Kurt could only answer.  
  
The man grinned at him and stuck his hand into the mouth of truth and said, “I love you. I will take you away from here and no one, not even your father will stop me. And one day pretty girl, I’m going to be a king and you are going to be my queen.”  
  
Slowly the man removed his hand from the mouth, his blue eyes twinkling, and Kurt who was not Kurt screamed. For where his hand had once been only a bloody stump remained._


	23. Chapter 21: Heat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which estrous has the worst timing.

  
**Helpful terms:**  
Bride: _a thrall who has developed vampire like abilities due to over exposure to vampire blood._ Bitch: _a derogatory name for a lycan male or female who has shamed themselves by giving away the things they should only share with a mate. This varies but most typically refers to the case of an unmated lycan bearing cubs outside of a mating bond._  
  


 

 

He was running in a dark wood. All around him there were trees but they passed him a blur. He was moonlight and shadow racing across miles of endless dark. He threw back his head and he howled the song reverberating in his chest as around him the darkness shifted. Out of its depths there came the glow of eyes burning hot and amber and he came to a sudden stop, pinned in place by their ferocious gaze. He was suspended in a dark cosmos pulled in by the gravitation of twin suns.  
  
He burned.  
  
Kurt snapped his eyes open, gulping for breath as the remnants of the dream clung to him. He closed them again and groaned against the uncomfortably sticky feeling of sweat on his skin. He wondered for a moment why the heat was turned up so high until he remembered it was summer and groaned again. Today was gearing up to be a scorcher, plus he was pretty sure he had to pee if the heavy pressure in his lower abdomen was anything to go by.  
  
He lay for a time with his eyes closed, unwilling to move if it meant facing the heat of the day, but eventually the pressure in his lower body became too discomforting. He squirmed a bit unconsciously, frowning at the increasing _itchiness_ he felt before sighing and giving in to the day. It was time to get up and find a stream to dunk in because good god did he itch.  
  
Kurt blinked away the sunlight, letting the room come into focus and realizing belatedly that he was no longer in the wilderness in Blaine’s room, the night before rushing back to him along with Blaine’s scent. He rolled over without so much as a thought to wrap his arms around Blaine’s back and bury his nose against his neck and took in a deep inhale.  
  
He fucking loved the way Blaine smelled sometimes and he’d forgotten how strong it got, almost overpoweringly so, when the slept together like this. It was nice when they were wolves but there was something about being close to Blaine like this and pressing their bare skin together that just couldn’t be replaced. Blaine was gorgeous, and so very warm and solid. For a time Kurt lay silently, watching the rise and fall of Blaine’s chest as the other man slept, his eyes following the trail of hair going into the waist band of Blaine’s shorts. He had to swallow because his tongue felt so suddenly thick in his mouth and his mouth too full of spit. Christ maybe it had been too long since he last got laid, if he was actually about to drool over a guy.  
  
Nearly a month, his helpful mind supplied. Just before last full moon. He’d slept with all of those guys in search of _this_. Kurt closed his eyes briefly and took another deep inhale, making himself dizzy with the heady sent of alpha. He was so dizzy he had to rollover back onto his side of the bed and let his head flop toward the wall. It was almost a drunken feeling he realized. He was light headed, his screaming libido insisting that it would be perfectly fine to trail his tongue over the knobs of Blaine’s spine or test the definition of Blaine’s arms with his hands, or slip the alpha’s shorts down and take a peek.  
  
Or you know swallow him. He could get on board with that plan.  
  
His brain really wasn’t being helpful today because as soon as Kurt thought it another even more licentious thought came to him. He could also get on _Blaine_. He could ride Blaine, get him inside where it throbbed and ride out the burn. That would be sufficiently distracting. Except— Kurt didn’t like that word as much—except Blaine didn’t want to mate and it would be kind of mean to fuck him in his sleep, that wasn’t playing fair and he’d probably be really mad at him.  
  
Kurt pouted for all of a moment before he remembered the brilliance of blow jobs. Blow jobs weren’t like _sex_ sex, so Blaine couldn’t get as mad right? They could stop whenever they wanted and he didn’t even have to bite Kurt if he didn’t want to. Only thinking of the bite sent a rush of heat pooling in Kurt’s stomach so fast and hot he groaned, twisting on the bed to relieve some of the pressure in his lower parts. This was the absolute weirdest boner he’d ever had. It was heavy and wet—his inner thighs felt slick and that was just a wholly unnecessary amount of precum… and damn he should stop thinking about coming and get to the doing. Was he making sense? He wasn’t sure anymore. He couldn’t think straight.  
  
Maybe if he came first and took some of the edge off he could concentrate better. That seemed like a plan to him. Kurt let out a pitiful whimper as he slid his hand inside his shorts and…  
  
He whimpered again, this time in rising panic because that thing every guy feared but never wanted to admit out loud had happened to him. His dick had fallen off. He’d _lost_ it. It was just gone and that just wasn’t right. It was so unright a sudden sob welled up from within him and he had to stifle it with his hands.  
  
He couldn’t wake Blaine, some instinct warned him as his mind raced with fear and confused thoughts. He had to think. Dicks just didn’t go missing. He knew this meant something important and if he just calmed down and thought things through he’d remember.  
  
His guts twisted again, that deep insistent pulse fluttering in his… Kurt clenched his teeth and stroked over the now unfamiliar area of his sex and shivered as his fingers bushed across soft sensitive folds. He was a grown man. He knew what a vagina looked like even if he’d never felt one before now. He bit down on his tongue choking off the panicked cry that wanted to burst out of him and rolled away from Blaine. He couldn’t think at all now, he just had the knowledge that he had to get away. He didn’t know why, there was just this voice in his head screaming it at him. Something bad would happen if Blaine saw him like this.  
  
He had to hide.  
  
~*~*~  
  
Lina had woken early that morning to give Benito his morning bath. She wanted to get them into town to do some shopping before she had to report back to work that afternoon, and Beni would need a nap before then or he’d be fussy during her shift. The rest of the household was still sound asleep so when she heard the insistent but furtive knocking on the door of the guest room Blaine had given her and Kurt to spend the night in she was surprised. She had hoped that when Kurt went to Blaine’s room the night before that it would mean the Alpha would finally claim him good and proper, but when she raised her head and caught his scent her hopes were dashed.  
  
“Blaine is as stubborn as a mule,” she turned to say to the little boy in the tub and he shrugged his small shoulders at her as if to say ‘what did you expect’. She left him attempting to drown one of his floating ducks in order to let Kurt in, frowning as she got closer and closer to the door and his scent seemed to get stronger and stronger.  
  
“Kurt?” She gapped at him when she’d finally opened the door. Lina knew what was wrong with him even before he took a step into the room and violently recoiled backward.  
  
“Blaine’s been here!” he accused, his eyes wild with panic and Lina hastily shook her head.  
  
“No, not Blaine, Benito.” She stepped out into the hall and grasped him lightly by the arm. She imagined trying to sooth him just then must feel something like trying to pet a wild tiger. She was not surprised to find his skin heated as with fever, but it did confirm her suspicions. “Kurt, you’re going into heat.”  
  
“Heat?” Kurt swiveled his head around to stare at her with such befuddlement it would have been amusing if she hadn’t felt so sorry for him. Unbonded heats could be excruciating in the best of circumstances, but with Blaine imprinted on him Kurt’s body would _know_ he had a suitable mate and it would try all the harder to fulfill its biological needs.  
  
“Ci, darling, heat. I should have recognized the signs, but you had been through such an ordeal I thought…” She trailed off when Kurt curled inward, clutching his belly and moaning, as if seized by a sudden cramp. Remembering her first heat all too well Lina winced. “Oh never mind what I thought, it hardly matters now. Come here piccolo you need to lay down.” She was gratified when he allowed her to lead him inside, leaning into the brace of her shoulder and the comforting stroke of her hands.  
  
“L-Lina I don’t… I d-don’t feel good,” he gasped out, voice ending on a high whine as he curled up again, halting their progress across the room.  
  
“I know. You won’t I’m afraid until it passes. Lay down now on the bed piccolo, that’s it.” Kurt fell onto the bed in a boneless heap, curling immediately into a fetal position. Lina watched him fearfully for a moment, her frantic mind trying to figure out what to do. A lycan in heat always attracted alphas and there were any number of young unbridled alphas going in and out of the manor every day. Her heart started to beat faster when she remembered that the entire guard would be arriving soon to break their fast. Kurt’s smell would only get stronger as his heat progressed, leading anyone with a nose right to him.  
  
She rushed to lock the door but even as she did it she knew it to be a fruitless action. Something as simple as a locked door wouldn’t keep a heat mad alpha out for long. They had a safe house for unbonded subs for a reason.  
  
Did she have time to get him to the safe house? No, she decided, as Kurt groaned loudly on the bed and thrashed around feebly before curling up again. He was already too out of it, his smell was too strong and if they met someone on the road she was only one wolf, and an omega at that. She’d protect him with her life but she was no match for an alpha.  
  
“Lina!” Kurt cried out clutching his abdomen and writhing. “I-it h-hurts. It’s s-so hot. I need… I need….” His voice faded in to whines, his chest heaving with the struggle to breathe and Lina’s eyes widened when she saw that the shorts he wore had ridden low on his hips and… she tilted her head, unsure at first what was striking her as off until she realized there was no telltale bulge where his sex should be.  
  
“Merda, Blaine!” She cursed, rushing into the bathroom to fetch a hand towel and run it under the cool water. She muttered franticly to herself as she worked. “You fool. He’s breeding. You should have claimed him when you had the chance! Someone should smack you over your stubborn head.”  
  
“Mama?” She looked down to find that Benito had twisted around in the tub to gaze up at her fearfully, upset at her obvious distress. She tried to make her smile as calm and assured as she could make it.  
  
“Can you dry quickly for me piccolo?” She asked even as she reached for the towel. “Dry and come quickly to me. You must do a very important thing for mama.”  
  
Leaving Benito in the bathroom she rushed to return to Kurt who she discovered had kicked free of his shorts and was lying shivering on the bed in nothing but his sweat.  
  
“Blaine?” he pleaded, turning his head weakly when she sat on the bed beside him. Lina winced, remembering belatedly that she was brining Benito’s smell with her. Though it might provide his fevered senses some initial relief she knew it was nothing more than a cruel tease for him right now.  
  
“Shh piccolo,” she soothed, wiping his brow with the damp cloth. “All will be well. You’ll see.”  
  
“Blaine!” He insisted sharper this time and Lina swallowed thickly. She heard the bathroom door open and a moment later she felt Benito’s hand touch her hip and she looked down to meet his worried gaze.  
  
“Is Kurt sick mama?” Benito asked before sticking his fingers in his mouth in a gesture Lina knew was for comfort.  
  
“No, piccolo, Kurt is in heat. Mama has them and one day you will have them and they are not to be feared… though they can be frightening when experienced alone. But you won’t have many alone, and neither will Kurt.” Lina would see to that! Because Blaine was a fool to have waited this long while keeping such intimacy between them.  
  
With the stress of the previous week forcing him and Kurt to lean on each other, combined with Kurt’s newness to his lycan hormones and the onset of the full moon, of _course_ Kurt was going into heat. She should have expected it. She knew what it was to be converted and to grapple with the changes in her body… but then again, it had taken her so much longer to go into her first heat. She’d been seeing a different side of her James by the time she was converted.  
  
Thinking of him now brought the past rushing back to her. His touch, sometimes so tender it broke her heart, and sometimes so cruel she bruised for days… sometimes she’d bled. She hadn’t wanted so much of what had transpired during her heats, including getting pregnant, but she knew once the fever started how much the ache took over, how desperate the wolf could be for its mate and how it would stop at nothing to reach fulfillment. She would always love her son, but that did not lessen the pain of his conception and her choices were one thing. She had no right to force them on Kurt. She knew that but she also knew the danger they were in.  
  
“Kurt, look at me bambino.” She gripped his chin to turn his gaze and his fever bright eyes finally settled on her. “Soon the guard will arrive and when they do they will try to breed you. You must not judge them too harshly. They would not be alphas if they didn’t try.”  
  
“Blaine,” Kurt moaned his mates name again and Lina could have cursed again because that was the entire problem. Blaine _wasn’t_ Kurt’s mate. There was nothing to keep the other alphas away.  
  
“Yes… piccolo, Blaine will come too. There will be a fight. He will win but someone may die… and he will claim you and breed you—”.  
  
“No!” Kurt kicked at an invisible foe, thrashing in her arms. “I don’t… I don’t…no!”  
  
“—which you still fear and your fear will tell you to fight. But Kurt you can’t fight. Do you hear me? If you fight the wolf in the middle of a claim he will try all the harder to subdue you and that is a pain you cannot imagine. The wolf would kill you before it let you go or let someone else have you.”  
  
Kurt went suddenly still though he panted heavily and his eyes remained glassy and too wild as he watched her.  
  
Lina glanced around the room looking for something to help her when her eyes landed on the draperies.  
  
“That will do,” she murmured rising to cross the room and removed their golden ties. When she returned to the bed she expected him to guess what she was about to do and try to run, but to her amazement he held absolutely still as she wrapped the golden cords around his wrists.  
  
“I’m sorry, my friend. I h-hope you will forgive me for this. I will understand if you do not.”  
  
When both arms were secured to the headrest she stood back. She had no idea how much Kurt was aware of or what was going on in his mind now that he was at war with a body that wanted nothing more than to be mated with and bear progeny when he simply wasn’t ready to do so. She could only be thankful that by some miracle he’d not fought her binding him.  
  
“Piccolo?” She turned to Benito who was watching them silently with wide eyes. He backed away shaking his head when she took a step toward him. “Listen to mama. I need you to do a very important thing. Do you remember how I told you that one day you might have to be brave without me?”  
  
He glanced at Kurt tied to the bed, groaning and sweating. The little boy’s lip trembled but he nodded.  
  
“Well today is a day like that. Kurt needs me to stay here, to protect him like I protect you until help can get here. And that’s what I need you to do,” she gripped his thin shoulders gently but firmly and tried to ingrain her next words into his memory with all the will she could muster. “There is still time. You must run to Blaine’s room and bring him here. You must be quick piccolo and most importantly you must not let anyone stop you. Do you understand?”  
  
His lip continued to tremble but Benito nodded, his spine stiffening straight and Lina pulled him into a tight hug, offering prayers to whatever spirit might be watching over them to keep him safe. She ran her hand up his spine, an unspoken signal to let his wolf free and she watched him shift until his unsturdy toddler legs had been replaced with four sturdier ones, but no less small or fragile to Lina’s anxious eyes.  
  
“Go on,” she nudged him toward the door and the cub yipped stumbling forward before catching his footing and racing toward the door, Lina following behind. She unlocked it, opening it just enough for the black coated cub to slip through and closed it quickly behind him. Something about the sound of the lock clicking in place made tears spring to her eyes.  
  
~*~*~  
  
_“… Senator Riley met with the HCP chairman yesterday, giving this statement to the press, ‘We’re very happy the bill is moving on to the senate and I hope to have the backing of my colleagues as we try to assure a safer America.’ The Show & Tell bill if passed would require mandatory testing. All those found to be carrying the lycan gene would be required to register with the government and wear trace tags. The bill was proposed eight months ago after David Karofsky, a closeted subhuman, shifted during a football game and killed four of his high school teammates. Lycan sympathetic parties have protested the bill as unconstitutional but Riley had quite a bit to say at today’s hearing….”_  
  
Mercedes Jones paused, the clean menus she was stacking forgotten as her eyes found the TV mounted on the wall at the cafe. She had lived and worked in Westerville for the last five years and had kept to the same routine of watching the news while she fixed herself an early breakfast before work. Westerville wasn’t where she’d imagined spending the rest of her life, but then again she wasn’t really sure _what_ she was doing with it anymore. She’d had big dreams when she’d left high school for California, and there had been a guy and promises of an album once, but it had fallen through when she wasn’t willing to take off her clothes in order to make it in the business.  
  
She’d moved back home and let her parents drive her crazy for a while before answering the ad she’d stumbled upon on Craigslist for a hostess position at a café in Westerville. It was still in Ohio, everywhere she didn’t want to be, but at least it was four hours from her folks. She’d wondered at the time why a well-established joint like Café Lynch would be so hard up for a hostess that they’d hire her without so much as a reference, but she’d caught on quickly when she’d met the couple that owned the place.  
  
_“We’re lycan,”_ they’d revealed to her, their eyes suddenly burning similar shades of brilliant amber as if for proof. _“While our door is open to everyone who passes through here, this is a safe place for people of our community to gather. That won’t be a problem for you will it?”_  
  
It certainly might have been a problem for many of the other applicants (Mercedes’ own parents still worried about the fact that she was living so close to the lycan reserve and _working_ with them on top of things) but it hadn’t been for Mercedes, who had met her first lycan in California (a boy named Wade who turned out to be neither a boy nor a human, which had made Mercedes’ chances at stardom seem almost sunny by comparison) and she’d figured they couldn’t be any better or worse than anyone else.  
  
Not everyone saw it that way. Many of her friends and family rallied with the Human Conservationists and Show  & Tell had been the hot political topic for months now. Mercedes had gotten to know the chairman of the HCP’s face so well she swore she’d be seeing it in her dreams. The news reel was playing a clip of New York senator Riley, standing at a podium in front of a crowd of reporters, Ohio state senator Holly Holiday and some suits Mercedes had no hope of distinguishing from the soup of political faces she casually observed every morning standing a ways off.  
  
_“The constitution of the United States protects the rights of all men. Over the years it has come into question whether women, persons of color, and persons of different sexual orientations were included in that. There are those who would wrongly debate the lycan issue as a civil rights issue, who would wrongly equate the necessary and profound efforts of men and women throughout history to secure the liberty of all men and women in America, with a dangerous predators desire to hide among us. But lycans do not claim humanity and they should not be afforded it. They are not men. Many of them do not pay our taxes and do not follow our laws. Our laws should not protect them at the people’s expense. Who are your children playing with? What lives in the woods behind where you raise them? Who are your neighbors? Who is sharing a football field with your son on the full moon? The parents of Azimio Adams and the three other teenagers murdered by their schoolmate would have liked to know.”_  
  
Mercedes scowled, reaching for the remote and powering the small television unit off. These pushes for new legislation made her nervous. She’d hoped like many other lycan supporters that it would die in committee but the bill had made it all the way up to the senate now and that was more than alarming. Show  & Tell was bad news but it was heavily supported by an ignorant public that frankly only had programs like Wake Up Columbus to educate them. People were scared, but it was frustrating that they really had only to look to Westerville to see that humans and lycans could peacefully coexist. Nothing ever happened in Westerville and you’d think it would, being right at the edge of a lycan safe zone, but despite all that crock and bull they pushed on the TV about the danger of having subhumans living in their midst Mercedes hadn’t encountered too many problems.  
  
The closest she’d ever felt to being in danger at the café was when that guy had come in asking for Lina. He’d been unusually aggressive and way too familiar with her. Mercedes worried about her coworker, because she knew Lina had been through things. They didn’t need to be besties for her to notice the signs. Lina hadn’t come in to work for days and when Mercedes had asked the Lynches why they’d told her she was on a trip. Some lycan thing or another that Mercedes didn’t understand and they weren’t going to explain to her anyhow.  
  
Oh well. What went on in the lycan community wasn’t really her privilege to know, what was her business was what was going on in the senate, which was why she should put a note for herself and confirm the Al-LY meeting that afternoon. Mercedes had joined the Westerville chapter three years before.  
  
The door jingled alerting the young woman that another customer had arrived. Since they were short staffed with Lina gone she was doing double duties that day. She turned and looked to the front and in walked trouble. Mercedes had seen all kinds of it and she wondered if this guy would fall under the good kind or the bad kind.  
  
~*~*~  
  
Sam got off the bus at Westerville with a relieved sigh, slinging on his backpack and shrugging it tiredly into place. He held his breath as the bus pulled out of the station, the fumes from the exhaust and the stench of so many sweat soaked bodies in such close quarters still clinging in his nose. Buses weren't his preferred ride but he didn't feel safe traveling like a wolf now.  
  
He'd woken up in a strange cellar, the air musty and stale and the light dim from a low hanging lantern flickering blue fire. He'd been chained to the wall but the wall itself wasn't in the best repair. He'd noticed that the bolt keeping the chain in place was loose where some of the stone had worn away. After a few desperate hours of pulling and twisting on the chain he'd finally torn free.  
  
Breaking out of the cellar had been only marginally easier. The door had been locked and he'd been too afraid of alerting his captor (wherever Jesse was) of his attempted escape to try breaking it off the hinges. Plus there was the collar and chain to think of. They'd prevent him from shifting and draw too much attention if he didn't find some way to remove them. He'd had to wait for Jesse to come feed him, tense and anxious, before he could take his chances at overpowering the wizard.  
  
Though he'd had the opportunity when he'd had the chain wrapped around the wizard’s neck Sam had tried not to kill him. Not because he'd never had to kill before (he had, though it had been awhile) but because Jesse had saved his life. And sure, it had been to use for his own ends but Sam couldn't get the wizard's face out of his mind when he'd said 'better you than' me, or forget the way that vampires bite had looked on his neck. On the crazy vampire's payroll or not if not for Jesse he'd be dead so he figured they were even now.  
  
He'd stolen the key to his collar out of Jesse's robes as well as the basket of laundry the wizard had been carrying. He’d dressed and stuffed the remainder of the clothes into a back pack he'd found hanging on the outside of the cellar door. They were a little short and a little tight in places but he couldn't risk going back home. That vampire had known too much about him.  
  
Sam was in way over his head but he couldn't shake the need he felt to get to Westerville. There was something he had to do there and no amount of convincing himself to turn back and get as far away from Ohio as possible seemed able to deter him. Maybe he was a better person than he'd ever imagined because despite the way he was so sick with terror he couldn't seem to get warm or stop shaking, warning Kurt about the psycho that was after him seemed to be his prime directive.  
  
So he'd do that. Then he was getting the hell out of Ohio because who knew when that thing would catch up to him and Sam never wanted to see that creature again if he could help it. Jesse had said they wanted to use him for something. He wasn't looking to find out for what.  
  
He was still debating on whether he should risk saying goodbye to his brother and his sister first. They were safe at the school and as far as Sam knew Jesse and his vampire Master didn't know about them. He had better keep it that way. He was an idiot for even _coming_ to westerville. What the hell was he doing!  
  
“Come on Evans, you don't even know this guy. Get the hell out of here...” He muttered to himself and a teenager sitting on a nearby bench glanced at him like he might be crazy. He certainly felt it.  
  
At that moment his stomach let out an embarrassingly loud growl. There had been some money in one of the pockets of the backpack and he'd used some of it to buy his bus ticket. He remembered eating at a cafe in town one his last visit to Westerville so he figured he out to head there. He could hear his mother's voice berating him for thinking of his stomach at a time like this but a wolf had to eat and he figured that like the bus, the cafe was the last place someone would look for a wolf on the run.  
  
It was a sunny day in late summer so it was plenty hot, but Sam wondered if that vampire venom hadn't led to some sort of infection because he was flushed and sweating heavily by the time he reached his destination. When he walked through the door it swung open with an obnoxiously loud jingle and Sam winced, eyes darting nervously at the other patrons as they glanced up from their plates and their private conversations to see what was causing the ruckus. He didn't' see Jesse or the vampire anywhere but that didn't mean anything.  
  
“Good Morning. Welcome to Cafe' Lynch. My name is Mercedes. Party of one?” A short human woman called from the hostess station and Sam blinked at her stupidly for a moment before he remembered how to speak.  
  
“Yeah, it's just me.”  
  
She led him to a table by the window and Sam paused, hanging back as she set a menu down and straightened the silverware. It was a moment before she realized he hadn't made a move to sit down.  
  
“You okay?”  
  
“Yeah... uhm,” Sam flushed as the woman stood up straight and put her hands to her hips. He kept smelling her shampoo every time she moved, her scent drifting to him carried by the breeze of an open window near the back of the cafe. She smelled like the linen from the table cloths and there was something warm and almost lemony underneath the smell of morning coffee clinging to her skin. Her mouth turned down into a frown as the seconds dragged on without a reply and Sam realized he was acting like a total idiot.  
  
“Can I sit somewhere without a window?” She blinked at the abruptness of his reply and he rushed to find a viable excuse for his weirdness. “It's just that I don't... like the sun. I'm pretty pale so I get major sunburn.”  
  
Sam had never seen someone look so unimpressed but the woman collected his menu without complaint and gestured for him to follow her to another table closer to the kitchen. It was a little too close to the kitchen for Sam's keen sense of smell but he wasn't about to complain again.  
  
“Alright Casper here you go, out of the sunlight.” She said as Sam sat down, she handed him back his menu and as he reached to take it from her she leaned close and whispered under her breath. “Look I have no problem with it but if you're a vampire or something you might want to consider ordering to go. This is a hot joint for lycans and if you're going to start sparkling or something...”  
  
  
“You think I'm a vampire?” Sam thundered, the sudden rage he felt at being mistaken for one of those monsters surging. “No way. I'm _lycan_ ” the silverware jumped as his hands hit the table. “I was born a lycan and there's no way I'm ever gonna become a blood sucker. Got it?!”  
  
“Okay, okay,” Mercedes' voice was gentle as she replied attempting to sooth his rankled nerves. Her eyes had darted down to the table and Sam realized belatedly that he'd bunched up the table cloth with his fists.  
  
“I didn't mean to offend you. The sunlight thing was just a bit odd that's all,” she apologized looking about as embarrassed as he felt.  
  
“I'm sorry...” it was more effort than it should have been to release his fists. “I'm not... It's been... it's been a bad couple of days.” He looked down, unable to face the kindness in her eyes or the fear he feared he'd find there. When she finally gave up and moved away he picked up the menu and stared at it, the glossy words blurring in front of his eyes. He realized he wasn't even reading it when a cup of coffee on a plain white saucer landed in front of him with a definitive thunk.  
  
Sam stared at the seemingly nondescript beverage and then back up at Mercedes, mind sluggish and unable to make sense of its sudden appearance in front of him.  
  
“On the house. You looked like you needed a coffee,” she answered his unspoken question kindly and Sam gulped back the sudden urge he felt to just let his head hit the table and cry.  
  
“Thank you.” He rasped out instead, raising the cup to his lips. His hands were shaking like an addict so he only managed a brief sip before he lowered it again. “I'm sorry I wigged out on you earlier.”  
  
“I shouldn't have assumed. You know what they say about that.” She grinned sheepishly at him. “Vampires aren't your favorite people are they?”  
  
Maybe it was a testament to his exhaustion or the fragile state of his sanity but Sam thought that was hilarious. He laughed so hard he had to set the coffee down to avoid spilling it.  
  
“No ma'am, they're not.” He confirmed with another chortle.  
  
“Ma'am? Just Mercedes thanks. I don't think I look old enough to be a Ma'am.”  
  
“Sorry. I'm from Tennessee.” He replied, like that explained everything, and maybe for Mercedes it did because she smiled back at him and nodded.  
  
“So you're a country boy? Welcome to Ohio I guess, land of 'what am I doing here'. Trust me Boo, you're not the only one asking.”  
  
He had been asking himself that, he'd been wondering it all night on the bus and every step he'd taken that morning in what he knew to be the wrong direction. He'd gotten free. So how come he still felt like he was trapped?  
  
“Look, Mr. Lycan…” Mercedes ventured after a long moment of silence had stretched with neither of them speaking.  
  
“Sam.” He cleared his emotion clogged throat and said, “My name is Sam.”  
  
“Look Sam, this is presumptuous, I get that, but my mom always did say I talked too much. Don’t look so glum.” Mercedes leaned over the table to place a hand on his shoulder, her warm lemony scent washing over him as she spoke lowly but insistently. “I may not know what it’s like to be lycan. But I understand fear better than I wish I did. It used to get me down a lot, until I met one of you guys and it reminded me that bad as it is, someone’s always got it worse. Things have come a long way for us so I figure they’ll come along for you guys too if we fight for it. I guess what I’m trying to say is you won’t be alone here. A lot of people find a new start in Westerville. So you don’t have to be afraid. You’ll have friends.”  
  
Sam didn’t know how to reply to that. He wished suddenly that he could confess everything to her, for she’d been kinder to him than any human had ever been, even knowing what he was, and her words struck something inside of him. He was headed to Anderson house as if he was programed to do so, despite his desperate want not to and not for the first time Sam wondered why.  
  
He felt so very alone… but maybe he wasn’t after all.  
  
“Anyway. Enjoy your coffee Casper.” Mercedes said with a wink when she figured out he wasn’t going to say anything more. “I’ll be back to see if you need anything else.”  
  
  
  
“A pen.” Sam decided it suddenly and Mercedes paused by his chair.  
  
“What now?”  
  
“Can I have a pen please?” Mercedes eyed him curiously but shrugged, disappearing around the counter for a moment and returning a moment later with a pen. Sam sipped his coffee and stared at it.

~*~*~

The morning rush had begun to kick in and as a result Mercedes didn’t get back to Sam as soon as she’d promised. In fact by the time she had a spare moment to breathe she turned toward the back table only to discover that sometime in the hubbub of the last ten minutes Sam had slipped away. For some reason she felt very disappointed about that.  
  
Her disappointment turned to excitement however when she noticed he’d placed his empty coffee cup on top of a napkin, a napkin with writing scribbled on the front. She couldn’t help the way her lips tilted into a slight grin thinking he’d left his digits.  
  
What she’d thought was a number however turned out to be nothing of the sort. It was an address and under it he had written:  
  
_My name is Sam Evans and I think I’m under a spell. My brother and sister are at Dalton. Tell them I love them. And don’t change your shampoo. My mother had famous lemonade back when we had a house and she’d always let me squeeze the lemons. Tell them I’m sorry they never got to taste it._

~*~*~

Calvin knew that it was dangerous to leave school without letting the den mother know but he wasn't _stupid_ like some of his classmates. He was much cleverer than Luke or Phineas. Their problem was neither of them had any imagination. They wouldn't know how to talk their way out of a paper bag, let alone out of trouble. It seemed like most of his life adults had been telling Calvin to be afraid of the world and not to take risks. He'd spent the first five years of it in an attic before his parents had shipped him off to Dalton. The boat ride over had been the most exciting thing to happen to him that he could remember. His first day in America had been the first day he'd ever walked freely in the daylight and he'd decided he never wanted to be caged in by four walls again. If Calvin could he'd see the whole world and never go indoors again.  
  
He didn't want to be a rogue. That would be kind of lonely, because adventures weren't any fun when you didn't have anyone to talk to them about and Calvin would definitely miss his sister too much to see the world without her, but he didn't think he'd mind being a stray like Sebastian.  
  
Sebastian still had his friends but he wasn't tied down like everyone else Calvin knew. Sebastian's mother and father didn't decide _his_ future for him. They didn't tell him he had to stay in boring old Westerville and learn how to do something equally boring for the pack so that when he was old enough he could get shackled to some old man and spend the rest of his life den-tied.  
  
Calvin had never been stupid. He knew his dad had only decided it was okay for him to stay in Westerville because he'd hoped that Blaine would be the old man that wanted to mate with him. Calvin didn't hate Blaine, he was nice so far as Alpha's went, and he played with them sometimes (which was something Calvin could never remember his own father doing). It was just that there had to be more to life than all of _this_ right? Who wanted to spend their entire lives doing the same things every day and seeing the same old sights? It was like that song Mai kept singing from her first expedition. Who wanted to stay in a poor provincial town when there was a great wide somewhere to be explored?  
  
Plus Blaine had Kurt now, so Calvin didn't even have being the Alpha's mate to look forward to anymore. Blaine didn't like Sebastian, but people usually didn't like strays so Calvin didn't pay the warnings to stay away from him and his pack much mind. The strays understood him better than any of the others did. Sometimes he felt even Clara didn't listen to him like Sebastian did.  
  
That morning was the first morning back from expedition and Calvin was determined to see him. He'd told Sebastian when he was leaving, because it meant he had had to spend an entire week away and he didn't want the alpha to worry. Sebastian always worried when he hadn't seen Calvin for a while, and it made him feel really good knowing that Sebastian enjoyed talking to him so much.  
  
Getting to the house Sebastian and his friends were renting wasn't always easy. For one thing sneaking past the den mothers required some creativity and a variety of stolen spices from the kitchen (one time he'd even rolled himself in rubbing alcohol he'd swiped from the clinic when he'd pretended to have a stomach ache, but he'd never done _that_ again because it had felt like taking a bath in lava when he shifted) then he had to get through the forest and make it to the house on the human side of town without running into the guard (which included using both his forms). Calvin had the routine fine-tuned by now but it still sent a rush of pride through him whenever he managed it.  
  
He was late that morning; on account of his struggle to find decent clothing once he made it out of the forest. It had rained while they’d been on expedition so the pair of shorts and flip flops he’d stashed in a hollow log hadn’t been any good. He’d had to go into town still in his wolf body and risk stealing some clothes off a laundry line. Somebody on Amberdeen Drive had a kid in little league who was going to need a new uniform.  
  
The walk to Wilson Street was pretty easy after that. Calvin looked like just one more kid walking about on a summer day and the guard rarely came into this part of town anyway. There was a much tighter patrol around Annehurst. The house Sebastian and his friends were renting was a three bedroom with peeling paint, a front porch surrounded by big trees.  
  
Calvin bounded up the porch steps, the scent of so many alphas in one location making him simultaneously nervous and eager; because he could pick out Sebastian’s strong woody smell and it made him somewhat giddy. There was also something else, something he’d never smelled before, but he didn’t have any time to really think about it because the door was swinging open almost as soon as his knuckles hit the wood.  
  
Thad (he bit if you tried to call him Thaddeus) opened his mouth to say something before he frowned and glanced down, clearly surprised to see Calvin standing there.  
  
“It’s you,” he huffed. “Go away pup Sebastian’s busy.”  
  
“But it’s been a week!” Calvin rushed to wedge his body in the door frame as Thad tried to close it in his face. “Sebastian’s not too busy to see me he said—”  
  
“Look here runt!” Thad jerked the door back open and glared down at Calvin with such a murderous expression that he took an involuntary step back. He knew the other strays thought he was stupid because he was young and soft because he’d been sheltered his whole life but none of them would hurt him. Sebastian would hurt _them_ if they tried.  
  
“I told you to go.” The words tore out of the towering man’s throat in a growl. “So go! Unless you’d like to get to know _me_ better? I’m not Sebastian but he tends to get his bitches broken, so maybe you’re better off with me.”  
  
Thad took a step toward him and Calvin took another horrified step back as the words and their ugly meaning sank in.  
  
“Scram pup. And if I were you I’d pray you never saw Sebastian again,” Thad warned him and then his lips twisted into a cruel smile and he promised, “But you will.”  
  
Calvin stood at the bottom of the steps burning with a strange mix of fear and humiliation long after Thad had slammed the door. No one had ever said anything like that to him before. Who would dare? He was the son of a pack Alpha, a nice person, a good brother… Blaine would cut off an alpha’s tongue if they’d ever dared to say anything so dirty about him. He wasn’t a _bitch_. He’d never even had sex!  
  
Thinking about it, thinking about what Thad had said about Sebastian, made his face turn red. It made something twist uncomfortably inside him because he wondered. _Did_ Sebastian have a bitch somewhere? Not that it was any of his business. He was twelve. Sebastian was older, and smart, and he’d seen the world. Calvin had lived in an attic for five years and had never been anywhere else but Westerville. Why would Sebastian ever want him? Sebastian probably had a hundred subs who just felt so lucky to be with him and having his cubs that they didn’t need to be in a claim. He could imagine that.  
  
Imagining it was painful.  
  
That was why Calvin grit his teeth and crept around the side of the house. He knew one of the trees back there scraped at the window to Sebastian’s room and he’d climbed it once before. He did so now with determination, the determination to prove Thad wrong. Sebastian was _never_ too busy to see him. He’d said so.  
  
The sight that greeted him when he was level with the window wasn’t anything extraordinary. Sebastian was in his room talking to another man, and though the guy was lying across the bed he didn’t look like a lover. He didn’t look like anything, just a guy in a leather jacket. Except, Calvin thought to himself as he inched closer, there was something vaguely familiar about him.  
  
~*~*~  
  
“ _That’s_ your plan. You must think I’m stupid,” Sebastian laughed at the man lying insolently on his bed. He balled his fists to keep from doing something truly stupid, like hitting the vampire master who was currently trying to yank his strings. “If you expect me to believe you can just waltz into the forest and nab Blaine’s mate right out from under his nose you really have lost your mind.”  
  
“Smythe,” M whined his name like Sebastian was a child he’d had to suffer too long. “You seriously need to work on your imagination.” the vampire flicked his dark hair out of his eyes with a dramatic flip of his wrists. “Not to mention your trust issues.”  
  
“Trust iss-listen!” Sebastian turned and snapped at him, nostrils flaring. “ _Nobody_ wants to get Anderson as much as I do but it’s not gonna be worth a damn if I’m dead. I never should have trusted you or your fucking _plan_. No more of this smoke and mirrors bullshit. Just admit it. You’re as helpless as the rest of us when it comes to Anderson. You can’t break in, you can’t kill him without cursing yourself and you’re stark raving if you think you can get away with touching his mate without a better plan than sending some random guy in to do your dirty work.”  
  
“You make it sound so simple when you say it like that,” M pouted and a growl of frustration rumbled in Sebastian’s throat. He was on edge and it wasn’t just because M was going to get them all killed. It was because he’d let a vampire of all things yank him around on a short chain only to figure out too late that he wasn’t as smart or as powerful as Sebastian had feared. He was different now. Not just in looks either. M had showed up looking windswept and fresh faced like the lead in some movie and with that leather jacket and the shades perched on top of his head he’d looked the part. Sebastian still expected someone to shout cut any minute.  
  
The biggest surprise wasn’t his affable mood or the change in his scent or even the honest to god bounce in his step, it was the eyes. Sebastian knew by now that M wore his shades everywhere to hide the fact that his eyes were as red as the devils must be, but with them perched on his head Sebastian could see that today was different. Today they were as clear and bright as the summer sky.  
  
Sebastian had no idea what M was but it wasn’t the fiend he was reputed to be. Sebastian had discovered things about him, things that he knew he could use against the man when the time was right and he planned to. Sebastian was livid because he’d been so _afraid_. No one had made him feel that way since he was a boy. No one ever would again he promised.  
  
“My plans are complex and multi-layered, because the situation is honestly almost unnecessarily complex. But that’s wizards for you,” M flapped his hand as if to say ‘whattya gonna do’. “I’ve told you before; you can’t do this without me Smythe. You have no idea how much you need me.”  
  
“I know about the girl.” Sebastian wondered if it was a mistake the moment he said it but he was sick of M acting so superior, talking in riddles and never really answering his questions. It was all bullshit. Sebastian wasn’t afraid anymore. At least that’s what he told himself when M slowly raised himself to sitting and stared at Sebastian without blinking for an inordinately long time before his lips spread in an absolutely humorless smile.  
  
“I know you do. I was the one who told you about her.”  
  
“I mean I know why you wanted us to make sure it was her. I know why you want her.” Sebastian grinned victoriously when M’s hands gripped his knees in a white knuckled grip. “Who are you M? I’m not doing a thing more for you until you tell me what I want to know. Talk fast.”  
  
“Hmmm,” M considered him for a long moment. “I could decide to kill you Smythe. So _so_ easily, it’s sad how much you have no idea. But I see your point. I mean we’re partners and now you’ve even met the wife. It’s just silly not to be on a first name basis, so hiya Sebby. I’m James.””  
  
Sebastian glowered, his mind working furiously as he considered M-James, not M he reminded himself. That name was just something _James_ used to create fear and boost his own ego. When all of the smoke and mirrors were stripped away he was just an egotistical lunatic, not to mention a leech.  
  
“Good to meet you James.” He sneered in response. “So the Medici whore was your thrall once? Don’t give me that shit about a wife, I’ve seen her. She’s no Bride.”  
  
“No she’s not,” James sighed. “Creating a vampire is a lot more complicated than creating a wolf Smythe, but that’s above your pay grade. Don’t worry that little pretty head about it. Stick to the plan and leave the girl to me.”  
  
“No, actually I’ve got a better idea. You get the hell off my property and don’t come back _James_. This partnership is done.”  
  
“You need me.”  
  
“Actually I don’t. See I know how you planned to take down Anderson.” Sebastian would treasure that shocked look on the vampires face for the rest of his life he was sure. He smiled smugly at the man on the bed and gloated, “I don’t sit on the sidelines waiting for daddy to tell me what to do James. Sorry but you chose the wrong stooge. You see I wondered why you’d have us target some nobody in Blaine’s pack. When I saw the kid it began to all make sense.”  
  
James went still again. He tilted his head just slightly, asking slowly and carefully as if he didn’t want to get the word wrong, “kid?”  
  
“That’s right,” Sebastian crowed. “I know about the kid. Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out when I got a good whiff of him? The only thing I want to know is what kind of a vampire would go through the trouble of making Medici’s daughter a thrall only to let her get away? To _Anderson_ of all people. I almost laughed myself sick when I heard that drivel they’ve been pushing about Blaine and the kid being kindred spirits or whatever. I didn’t think he had it in him personally. I wonder if Hummel knows that his mate has a bitch and a whelp on the side.”  
  
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” James warned quietly and Sebastian’s fists shook as another growl rumbled in his throat. He was done with being jerked around.  
  
“I’m gonna get to know her really soon so don’t worry about it. I’m going to ship her head to her father and keep the whelp alive just long enough to get Anderson. You see I _don’t_ need you any-”  
  
Sebastian felt something punch him in the throat. He staggered back, looking down in befuddlement, wondering what had hit him, to discover that he was bleeding profusely from where the hilt of a long skinny dagger stuck out of his throat. He fell to his knees with a gurgled cry, pain welling up like a rising tide as he grasped the hilt, desperate to jerk it loose and begin the change that would force his body to heal.  
  
His mind was getting sluggish as he toppled over, his flesh rippling with the beginnings of the change but too slowly, _much_ too slowly. Boots appeared in his line of vision and then M was leaning down sticking his face in Sebastian’s line of sight and clicking his tongue.  
  
“This won’t kill you. At the rate you’re shifting you’ll probably make it,” he guessed. He stared at the blood pooling around Sebastian’s head for a long moment, something hideously like longing in his eyes. Finally he sighed and straightened up, muttering something about it being the last time he went on a diet. “I guess if you don’t want to be my friend anymore we don’t have much to talk about. Consider this your only warning. Don’t touch the girl, don’t fuck with what you don’t know, and never _ever_ fuck with me Smythe.”  
  
And with that James stepped over Sebastian’s broken body and walked away.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
Calvin was frozen in terror as he watched the stranger in Sebastian’s room move faster than either of their eyes could follow and then, horribly, there was a knife sticking out of Sebastian’s throat and he was crumbling and Calvin was being yanked down into a black hole, screaming and falling, only not.  
  
Because what was yanking him down out of the tree was actually the hand of Nicolas Duval and once he’d fallen into the alpha’s arms Nick was quick to clamp a hand over Calvin’s mouth and drag him behind the house.  
  
Calvin tried to scream, kicking and thrashing as he struggled to get free.  
  
_“Be quiet!”_ Nick’s voice ripped through his mind like a blade and Calvin’s body jerked to a still at the command. Tears however continued to stream down his face as he saw over and over again that knife and Sebastian’s body falling. _“It’s time for you to run home little boy and if you had any brains you’d never come back here. You have no idea how close you’re courting death right now. You run back to your little pack and you stay there. Got it?!”_ He shook Calvin furiously until he nodded, crying harder but desperately swallowing his cries in order to obey the command to keep quiet.  
  
“Good,” Nick whispered, the desperation of his voice and the wildness of his eyes so out of place with the brightness of the morning and the rustle of the leaves in the breeze. “I need you to deliver a message for me, to Jeff.”  
  
“B-but Sebastian…” Calvin squeaked, seeing again the knife buried in his throat and the gush of blood. He closed his eyes and shuddered only to have Nick shake him again.  
  
“Would be better off if he died. We’d _all_ be better off, because now that he knows there’s a way to get rid of Blaine he’ll stop at nothing.”  
  
_“Why do you care!”_ Calvin’s mind screamed and Nick flinched. _“You hate Blaine! You hate us all and we never did anything wrong!”_ All he could see now were knives and blood, his imagination conjuring up pictures of Blaine and his friends, his sister, covered in blood and knives were glinting everywhere.  
  
“You don’t know anything!” Nick growled at him slowly through gritted teeth. “You are a _child_ raised among the victors of battles you know nothing about, so I suggest you keep quiet and do as I say. Sebastian was using you, Calvin, he does _not_ care about you. The only passion he knows is for revenge and he’s determined to have it, starting with Lina. Tell Jeff that Sebastian means to kill her and take the boy tonight.”  
  
They were going to kill Lina? Calvin’s world was reeling too much, too fast, the brilliance and beauty of the day becoming tatters around him in brutal violent strokes and there was absolutely nothing to hold on to. Nick seemed to realize that he was in shock, and therefore not much good to anyone because he did something strange then. He crushed Calvin to his body and laid a heavy hand on top of his head, as if it were Calvin who was spinning out of control and needed to be stopped.  
  
Nick grabbed a tight hold of Calvin’s hand and slapped it against his broad chest so that the boy could feel where his heart was thundering in his much larger rib cage.  
  
“In there? That’s wolf spirit. You know what that means? It means we’re warriors. It means that when the world bites we bite back. It means nobody and nothing can put you in a cage and you can’t be taught how to heel. We don’t heel.” He grasped Calvin’s shoulders tightly and stared at him so intently that the entire world seemed to disappear and Calvin caught his breath. “Your pack is in danger. It will be destroyed, Calvin, which means you have a choice to make. A wolf always knows what’s theirs. You know deep in here, in your own spirit, what belongs to you and it’s not Sebastian. No more childish day dreams. A child can be hunted. A child can be preyed upon. The wolf won’t be prey.”  
  
Calvin stayed lost in the yellows of his eyes for a long moment, feeling the wind from the trees sweep his hair across his brow, the heart hammering in his chest like a war drum and he waited to feel more grown up, more capable but nothing happened. The choice remained the same and so did he, just a skinny boy of twelve with unruly red hair and visions of knives dancing before his eyes.  
  
And yet he found it somehow easier to swallow and then easier still to nod because at least now the choice had been made. Nick was right. He knew where he belonged. Deep down he always had.  
  
“Why are you helping me?” he asked, because it did not make sense. Nick did not like pack wolves any more than Sebastian did. Sebastian and the other strays were his family, _his_ pack and he was betraying them.  
  
“Because the son of my enemy belongs to me too. It’s a very hard spot to be in but mercifully, it makes for a short existence.” Nick sighed and Calvin just gaped because it made no sense to him what so ever. Nick rolled his eyes and huffed at his look of confusion. “If you live long enough I suggest you brush up on your classics kid. Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, take it from me it’s all the same story, just people making the same dumb mistakes over and over again. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get another shot some other life. Now get out of here, before you get caught.”  
  
Calvin nodded and began striding briskly away, thinking fearfully about what might happen to his pack, his _family_ if he didn’t tell Jeff what Nick had told him about Lina, and then he thought about the strange things Nick had said, and the mean things some of the kids had been whispering about Jeff ever since that rumor started about him sleeping with another alpha on the full moon. Calvin slowed to a stop. He looked back to find Nick still standing in the backyard, watching him, the wind tossing his dark hair and such an expression of grimness on his face that it was clear to Calvin he was not trying to survive, only to see that Westerville did… that Jeff did.  
  
It bothered him for some reason that Nick had given up.  
  
“Nick,” he called behind him and the alpha snapped to attention, pulled from the darkness of his own thoughts. Calvin tilted his chin up as bravely as he could manage; trembling inside with fear as he courted danger and tossed the alphas words back at him. “Wolves don’t heel. Maybe this _is_ your shot. If you don’t want to be like those people, Romeo and Isolde or whatever, then don’t be.” Looking far braver than he felt Calvin turned and began walking away.  
  
His strides were quick, and then quicker, and then he was running, running for home.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a wicked place to end, but believe me it was the best and most obvious break in the narrative for this part of the arch. Next up Chapter 22: Bite. I know I've placed Kurt and Blaine in a precarious position with a potential for a lot of heartbreak and trauma. That is a lot of what Blaine's life, and now Kurt's by extension, entails. Kurt knew that and chose it anyway, but that won't make it easy. He and Blaine are really going to have to be solid and to bear a lot more than any one persons share if they are going to make it, that's just the hand life deals sometimes but there is comfort in other things (beautiful mercies that life grants us) and as this story is ultimately about them I'm taking this moment to say please don't be too scared. lol my motto seems to be becoming I can't promise a happy ending. Just an ending that satisfies.


	24. 22: Bite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happiness comes with a bite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Individual chapter warnings: This chapter has heavy trigger warnings for non-con as well as character death. Above all be safe darlings. Only read what you think you can handle. If you have any questions about the details please don't hesitate to inbox me on either LJ or Tumblr (same name) as I will be keeping an eye out on both for the next couple of hours. I have spent a lot of time going over this chapter and it's finally in a place I am happy with. It's a hard read however, I had to take some breathing time after. If you'd like a hug and a suggestion, I'd grab some tea, some blankets and have a listen to Florence & The Machine's Never Let Me Go. It gave me a lot of comfort.

_Earlier that morning_

Steven Evans yawned as he trudged down the unlit sidewalk. His eyes were more adjusted to the predawn light than a human’s might have been but the shadows and undefined shapes were enough to keep his step brisk. Every morning he walked the same route from Dalton to the repair shop in town in order to prepare for opening. He'd been an apprentice with Mr. Worral since he'd turned thirteen and he found that he liked learning to fix things. He much preferred it over the hospitality work Stacey was learning at the manor, that was for sure. 

The whirring and clicking of machinery combined with the scents of old leather and smoke from Mr. Worral's cigars was almost tranquil in comparison to the hustle and bustle of the manor house with its gossip and daily dramas. Stevie did wish that he didn't have to get up so early but Leroy, an older apprentice, had the afternoon shift and Stevie's own schedule was full of afternoon lessons that Den Mother Allie deemed important for an adolescent omega.

Steven yawned again, hunching his shoulders against the slight chill of early morning and contemplated the onset of fall. His dreary memories of making the route in winter with a foot of snow on the ground were not far behind. He was pulled out of those thoughts when he thought he heard something behind him. It was distant so it was hard to tell but it sounded like someone breathing heavily. He turned his head to peer down the road behind him.

He saw nothing suspicious. Just the long stretch of highway between town and the forest but his hair rose on his arms and he knew it had nothing to do with the weather this time. Stevie unconsciously reached to grip the thin silver whistle he wore around his neck. Allie issued them at the start of every waxing period but Stevie still had the same one from when he was thirteen. He knew the dangers to an unbonded sub that an alpha could present. Even though most alphas would never dream of forcing themselves on an unwilling sub the waxing period was an uncertain time for all of them. 

Anxious he turned back toward town and quickened his pace, his eyes now darting after every shadow. The return of the distant noise brought him to a stop again and he turned once more to glance behind him. Stevie was not comforted by the sight of the lonely wolf that had appeared on the road. The figure was too distant to get a good look at but Stevie's eyes widened at how big he seemed. The wind was not blowing in the right direction to catch a scent but he thought there was something vaguely familiar about the black silhouette, but he couldn't be sure. There were many strangers who passed through Westerville, but not many with his black coated follower’s size. The immensity of the figure made his heart pound as the wolf stalked toward him. 

_“Hello? What do you want?”_ Stevie called out loudly between their minds. But the strange black wolf did not answer. The wolf snapped its jaws instead and then it charged. In the same moment Stevie turned and began to run, slipping out of his sandals and ripping hastily at his clothing with extended nails. It was funny that now, being chased down by a stranger in the dark that he should hear his father’s voice complaining that a true wolf had no business dressing up like a man, that if he wasn't careful he'd find himself trapped by the very articles he thought granted him safety.

In the end his father was right. The end, though bloody, was mercifully quick. Steven Evan's barely had time to scream, let alone recognize the wolf that had leaped on top of him, but for a moment there, before he knew no more, he thought he did. 

~*~*~  
 _Blaine’s dreams had brought him to the hillside many times in his youth but he had not been there since he was a boy. Sometimes in the past it had been night, but this time it was a bright summer day, the breeze tickling his cheeks and brushing fly away strands of hair into his eyes. The sky was bright and blue above his head, as blue as the eyes of the guardian he remembered who used to visit him there._

_The woman who was not a woman always came to him the same way, on the back of a gray charger, her tresses streaming like tree branches behind her. She was someone who escaped definition, but that did not matter for he did not think her something human to be defined. She held the universe in her pupils, the oceans in her eyes, and every pulse of life within her breath. She was mângâiere._

_She was beauty and beauty was neither fine nor coarse. Beauty was femininity and masculinity in turns, supple with sinewy muscle, long clean lines and a firm jaw. Her eyes were frantic as she leaped from the back of the horse and stood before him smelling of leather and sweat and something baser that reminded Blaine strongly of Kurt._

_“There you are,” she greeted him, voice hoarse and almost as low as a man’s as she stared at him in wonder._

_“I still don't know you,” he murmured even as her pale hand reached to touch his cheek, the rough pads of her fingers somehow both the softest thing he'd ever felt against his skin and calloused enough to scratch. Her fingers though thin and elegant were not as dainty as they first appeared and he found he liked that, he liked the fact that looking at her was like unraveling a puzzle._

_“You do.” She assured him as she always had. “You always do.”_

_“I thought I'd never see you again.” He had wept the last time they parted. He had needed her so dearly in the trails of his adolescence and she had always been there, only to forsake him at the end._

_“I told you it would be some time before we met again,” she reminded him and he swallowed the urge to ask why. She had never answered him before and she would not now. “Would that you had chosen any other night but tonight.” She sounded mournful and Blaine’s heart ached, for he had longed for her all of these years and could not bear the thought that she had not done the same for him._

_“Has time changed me so much?” He asked, longing for the tender way she had looked at him in his youth._

_“Aye, it has...” she responded sadly, her fingers dropping from his face. Before sadness could overwhelm either of them she smiled bravely at him, touching her fingers to his waist, holding him lightly but firmly and added, “But then time has changed both of us.”_

_“You are beautiful.” Though her cheeks pinked she looked annoyed with his praise, puffing away the hair that had fallen in front of her eyes with an agitated breath._

_“So are snowflakes but what consequence has that in summer? This is not a lovely world,” she responded but Blaine did not know how that could be with her in it._

_“I disagree,” he replied softly, pulling her gently closer and closer still by the waist._

_“You always did.” She sighed and leaned into him, as if pulled by gravity, her brow touching to his as she gripped him tightly. It had never been like this between them before, but Blaine had only been a boy the last he'd seen her. In those days mângâiere had been his protector, his solace in a world that had seemed quite ugly indeed. Now he wrapped his arms around her and let his heart pound heavy in his chest and his blood course thickly in his veins. He thought it a strange thing to discover that guardians could shake with the fear of mortal men._

_“What is it?”_

_“I fear we are to be parted forever,” she confessed and Blaine did not like that. He did not want to be separated from her again. He had just found her._

_“Tell me your name and I promise I will find you wherever you go.”_

_“You have found me… but you will lose me if you do not wake.” She whispered and Blaine frowned in worry, her words spreading a dark chill over them both as clouds crept in much too swiftly to cover their sunlight and the wind picked up around them. He tore his eyes from the treacherous sky and stared at her, horrified at the fear he found in the gaze that had always inspired courage._

_“You must return to your world and you must remember.” She pleaded with him. “You are more than the wolf. You are also a man and now you are needed.”_

_“What do you-” Blaine's words were drowned out by a sudden boom of thunder and the woman who was not jerked in his arms before pushing him away with surprising strength._

_“Go!” He tried to reach for her but the wind seemed to both push and pull them apart whipping around from all directions. She turned to leap onto the back of the horse, turning back only once to shout again for him to remember. And just as he had when he was sixteen he watched her race away until he could see her no more._

~*~ 

Blaine woke up agitated. He couldn't say why.

There were times when falling asleep was like discovering that he could float above his body. When she was lucid his mother had sometimes whispered stories of the realm beyond the veil, of the guardians and Queens that inhabited Avalon and other things the minds of mere mortals could not conceive. Waking from those dreams was always like being dropped out of the sky and landing on cement.

He never recalled much of them beyond the feeling of comfort they gave him. At least he had not spent the night plagued by his memories or reliving his mistakes over and over again. He always slept best when he was with Kurt, and maybe that was what pulled him so suddenly from sleep, the knowledge of Kurt’s absence when he rolled over onto his side of the bed and found the sheets cool. Blaine frowned in displeasure, a hand grappling unconsciously with the cooled sheets as if Kurt could be found hiding somewhere at the edge of the bed. 

_'He should be here'_ his sleepy mind supplied, displeasure becoming an audible rumble in his chest. _'He belongs here with you. No one else!'_

Blaine's frown deepened as he blinked his eyes open, pulling away from the bed and concentrating on evening out his breathing. Waking up without Kurt was never easy. He had grown used to the restlessness of his wolf, the increasingly violent urges that plagued him as the wolf grew less and less patient and therefore less and less willing to be held back.

This morning his wolf was particularly aggressive. Unbidden Blaine’s nails had lengthened, catching on the blankets and ripping as he pawed uselessly at them, as if Kurt could be dug up out of their rumpled mounds. He had expected it, what with the full moon approaching, and knew that it wasn't helped any by the potency of Kurt's scent. Kurt’s smell was clinging to the linens like spilled perfume, strong enough to make Blaine feel light headed when he buried his face in them and took a deep inhale.

This close to the full moon it was only natural for Kurt's pheromones to be stronger but even he had not expected how heady it was. He would have to be more careful with the way they spent their time between now and full moon he decided to himself, unable to resist taking another deep drag of it. He didn’t want to provoke him into heat. Just thinking about the catastrophe that would be brought the frown back to his face and Blaine forced himself to go still and breathe through his mouth, because he was absolutely determined to prove to Kurt that he was more man than a beast. That was important to him… though he couldn’t have explained why.

Waiting was about more than wanting to keep Ian from meddling in their affairs. He didn't doubt the sincerity of Kurt's feelings, just Ian's ability to let things progress naturally and Blaine knew that rushing Kurt now would only mean unhappiness later. He wanted to assure their happiness, so the very least he could do was show some self-control.

“Be quiet you.” He willed his nails to retract and sat up, subduing the wildness inside with practiced control. He squashed the anxiousness he felt at Kurt’s absence because he knew Kurt wouldn’t appreciate his ‘alpha tendencies’. Logic said Kurt had left early to get showered and dressed for breakfast. He smiled fondly at the thought, because it was just like Kurt not to want to appear at table in Blaine's ill-fitting clothes.

The smile fell away as his unruly brain started thinking about Kurt in the shower, water sluicing over his long limbs, trickling over the smooth curves of his muscles and...

None of this was helping calm him down he reprimanded himself. Better make it a _cold_ shower this morning.

~*~*~

“Get out of the shower Kheil!” Jeff's irritated voice grumbled sleepily from outside the thin shower door and Chandler shivered. He let the command roll over him, imagining the water sweeping it down his back and away, sticking his tongue out at Jeff's silhouette behind the glass door.

“I'm busy,” he called back. “I've got to get clean before breakfast.” It was a faux pas to show up to a formal meal wearing your activities on your skin, and Headmaster Strand especially took it seriously. He was a stickler about the rules even when they didn't actually matter, like when the students ate together in the great hall, but since the guard ate with the Alpha at the manor house he'd go berserk if he caught a student arriving to breakfast smelling less than presentable.

“So do I! You've been hogging it for twenty minutes.” Jeff rapped on the door again.

“Well I need ten more!” Chandler insisted, opening the door just wide enough to poke his head out and glare at Jeff through the escaping steam. “You'd need it too if you'd had Rory slobbering all over you all night.”

“You let him fuck you?” Jeff inquired with a disbelieving smirk. “But we just got back! When did you even find the time?”

“He's sixteen. He only needs about two minutes,” Chandler grumbled and Jeff barked a laugh. Chandler glowered at the other boy. He was still sore about the fact that after spending the last couple of hours in the younger betas bed he couldn't complain of actually being sore anywhere physical. Rory was a sweetheart and always willing to help out during a certain time of the month but sex god he was not.

“You need an alpha.” Jeff stated oh so matter of factly and Chandler gave him a droll look, because he certainly didn't _need_ an alpha. Jeff just raised an eyebrow at his expression and challenged, “Aren't you always crowing about how you and Adam are meant to be?”

“One, just because I want Adam doesn't mean I need him. Two, I'm not spending every full moon in misery just because he wants to live in denial, so I can and will get my moon kicks on however and with whoever I please. And lastly, I might just be sick of bottoming for pushy alphas who don't know that their prostate has more than one function and mine wasn't built solely for them to ram at whenever they feel like it. Any more questions Jeffery or can I finish showering?”

“You're spending way too much time with Hummel,” Jeff grumbled. “Look just hurry up alright. The others are getting ready to leave and I don't want to be the one holding everyone up.”

“They don't have to wait you know. We're not pack mules,” Chandler griped but he reached back inside and dutifully turned off the water.

~*~*~

Sam stood at the edge of the forest. His body sweated profusely as it shook, his eyes fixed on his bare feet poised to cross the border between the highway and Anderson land. According to the legends you couldn't step foot in the forest if your intentions were to do harm unless you had the right blood or were invited inside.

Sam had no idea what constituted as an invitation, because wizard magic was way too complicated, but he did know one thing. He had no idea what his intentions _were_ when it came to getting to Kurt at Anderson house, just that he did not want to go but no amount of wanting had stopped him moving forward thus far. He was trying, straining and panting with the effort, but his body refused to turn back and he was growing tired.

A wave of exhaustion swept over him and Sam swayed. For a moment his vision blurred and he felt the world tilt. When he felt the pinching and itching of his skin as it began to stretch against his will he gasped, and then he screamed as his bones began to twist and the shift took over. The pain worsened with every second. He knew better than to resist a shift but there was something strange about this one. It was like someone had reached inside of him with a cold hand and wrenched him into the desired shape without so much as a care to whether the pieces fit or not. It was one of the most agonizing things he'd ever been through.

When it was through he lay in a limp heap, panting for breath in the dirt, embarrassingly high whimpers escaping him. For a while he did nothing but lay and hope that whatever nightmare he was trapped in would be over when he woke.

“Are you alright, kid?” A concerned voice called from above him and Sam opened bleary eyes to gaze at a tall woman with ebony hair leaning over him. He opened his mouth to say that no, no he was far from alright and he was pretty sure he was going to die soon but the words stuck in his throat, held back as if behind bars. He clenched his hands in the dirt in frustration squeezing his eyes so tightly shut they leaked tears.

“I'm fine,” he heard his voice rasp; only it sounded funny to his ears. Gruff with pain and exhaustion but somehow higher and thinner than Sam's voice had been in years.

“I heard you scream,” the woman said to him as he struggled to sit up. “You scared the shit out of me Stevie. What are you doing out here by yourself?!”

“Stevie?” Sam blinked at her in confusion and the woman's frown deepened. That was his brother’s name.

“Did you hit your head when you fell?”

Sam shook his head wildly, bringing up his hands to stare at them in horror. They were smaller and finer boned, and so were his legs and his feet, and now that he was paying attention he thought he might be lower to the ground than he should be and his hair was longer and blonder than it should have been without having dyed it in a while. 

“No! I’m not…. my name is.... my name is...!” He tried to say his name but the word was wrenched from his tongue and pinned to the roof of his mouth every attempt he made. The burning sensation that rushed down his throat was like the touch of flames, a clear warning against attempting it again. Whatever spells Jesse had put on him were getting stronger.

~*~

Noelle Harris had seen a lot since she’d fought with Blaine in the uprising. She knew the value of listening to her instincts, and instinct was screaming that something was very _very_ wrong when the young omega started screaming and had what appeared to be a seizer right in front of her and passed out cold on the ground. Noelle and her protégé Sugar had been on early patrol and Noelle had sent Sugar on ahead to get ready for breakfast when she’d caught a strange scent. It was not pack but that wasn’t so alarming, as it wasn’t unusual for strangers to pass peacefully through the outer parts of the forest.

But something about that scent had tugged at her memory, inspiring strange feelings of connection that she could not explain given that she almost had trouble tagging the scent as lycan at all. It was close enough that it had to be, and yet it was unlike any lycan Noelle had ever come across. There was something metallic in the scent notes, something dark and insidious that made nervousness dance up her spine with every sniff. 

She’d become very alarmed when the scent had led her straight to a bloody patch of ground, blood that she’d been able to tag quite easily as pack and belonging to a young omega, and not just any. She’d recognized Stevie’s scent from when she’d taken her radio into the repair shop a few months ago. Noelle had whimpered at the sight of it for there was too much of it for the boy to be alive. 

Immediately she’d reached out to her Alpha but though she knew for a fact that he’d returned from expedition his mind remained too distant to touch. He was _there_ , healthy and whole so far as the bond let her know but he was somehow also _away_. Trying to reach him had been like trying to shout across a canyon and Noelle feared what it might mean.

She’d informed was and had been on her way back to the manor when she’d heard the scream and found Stevie alive and unharmed to the naked eye; but he seemed confused, panicked, and Noelle remembered all too clearly the blood she’d found. 

_“I found him Wes,”_ She called to the Beta. She wondered if he was having any better luck reaching Blaine. _“Shifting seems to have taken care of his physical wounds but he’s in shock, didn’t even know his own name.”_

 _“Thank god for that. Bring him back to the house. I’ll alert Quinn.”_ Wes’s thoughts floated into her mind and Noelle huffed, because that was much easier said than done with Stevie unconscious. She shifted, abandoning her stronger wolf body for long almost gangly limbs and soft dark skin. Noelle knew she didn’t look like much in this shape, even with the muscle tone her active life gave her, men in town were always calling her some variant of princess. They’d have been shocked indeed to see the wisp of a woman kneel and hoist an adolescent boy into her arms bridal style. 

_“I’ve got him,”_ she informed Wes. _“Is Blaine….”_

 _“I’m headed to him now. Get the boy to Quinn and keep this to yourself until we can get his story. The less people we stir into a panic the better.”_ Noelle nodded grimly though Wes was not there to see her. With the full moon so close what had happened was not hard to guess. An alpha had tried to force themselves on an unwilling omega, something that was sure to rile the rest of the pack until the culprit was found and appropriately punished. She hoped the bastard got what was coming to him.

~*~*~

This was shaping up to be a bad morning. Which really sucked for Wes Montgomery because the night before hadn’t exactly been a peach either. When he’d received Noelle’s summons he’d immediately tried to contact Blaine and had found that even he was barred from his Alpha’s mind that morning. There were only a few reasons that could be. Blaine was either too far away for his mind to be touched, or Blaine had chosen that morning to get a damn move on and bite Kurt. Given that they’d only arrived home a few hours before and Wes had it on good authority that a certain beta had found his way into the Alpha’s bed the suspected the latter.

“Where are you going?” Emma asked as he limped from the bed and Wes rubbed the hand that caught his, soothing her over their bond. She was still anxious and loath to let Wes out of her sight. It was high time he claimed her good and proper, and Wes had the thought that now that Blaine was finally sorted out he could turn his focus back to his own den. That was one of the inconvenient things about mating, at certain points a mated pair became lost to each other and it was just better to stay the hell out of their way. Most typically it was during heats, but right after the initial bite they were always stuck to each other like burrs until the bond settled. He had never wanted to risk that before. No matter how often Blaine had insisted that he not worry Wes knew how heavily Blaine relied on him. He and David had been all Blaine had for the longest time but now... now things were a bit different. 

“I need to check on Blaine. He’s not responding,” he explained to her and Emma’s eyes widened in worry. Wes leaned down and planted a soft kiss on her lips, smiling when they parted against his, entering her mouth with a soft lick. God she was beautiful. He had no idea how he’d gotten so lucky. If life were fair at all he wouldn’t have to leave and he could just stay and kiss her all morning. But duty did call, so he pulled away and murmured, “Don’t worry. He’s probably with Kurt. I just need to check and then handle this. You stay here.”

“Okay.” She nodded obediently and Wes beamed at her, diving in for one last kiss before straightening and turning to limp towards the door. When she called his name he paused at its opening and looked back at her. 

“Be safe won’t you? I know everything’s fine I just… I have this feeling. Promise you’ll only be a moment?”

He promised, because even though he had no reason to fear his own safety he knew it would be some time before the memory of his being shot faded from her mind.

Walking to Blaine’s quarters was slower than usual with his injury but it gave Wes plenty of time to think about the events of the morning, the troubling attack on the Evans boy, Blaine’s unfortunate timing, the strange smell in the air that kept tickling at his senses and pulling his mind to contemplate its layers, the even stranger sight of a small wolf cub scratching at Blaine’s door with high pitched yips and the most heartbreaking whining Wes had ever heard come out of a cub.

He began to think something was very wrong indeed.

When he recognized the cub his worry doubled and when he was near enough to smell him his heart dropped into his stomach. That scent that was growing heavier in the air, it was clinging to Benito’s fur. He’d been near a wolf in heat. Christ if Lina had gone into heat with the guard arriving for breakfast he’d just give up. Wes knew his suspicions were true by the tug he felt in his belly and the angry buzz that began in his mind as his instincts began to clamor to seek out the source of the smell growing heavier and heavier around him. 

Desperately he thought of Emma, waiting obediently for him back in his bed, whom he’d promised he’d return quickly to and mercifully some of the fire cooled. Thank god he’d already bonded with her or this could have gotten very messy. He just hoped their tender and unconsummated bond would be enough to help him keep his head.

Wes was shaking as he scooped the frantic cub into his arms. Benito fought being held, actually biting Wes’s hand and drawing blood. The older wolf jerked his hand away with a glare at the child but he couldn’t really hold it against him, not given the situation. The poor kid was probably terrified and it didn’t surprise Wes at all that he’d run straight to Blaine given how close the two were. Oh god and if Blaine was in the middle of mating with Kurt he was going to be useless.

“Your timing really sucks Blaine,” Wes muttered as he held the boy tighter to him and turned to knock on the door.

~*~

The water was cold but it did little to cool the fire in Blaine’s skin. The burn was relentless, his mind acting up like an unruly child and conjuring up images of Kurt. He couldn’t remember it being this bad last moon, though jerking off in his shower to thoughts of Kurt wasn’t exactly a _new_ practice.

Still, something was different. It was too hot and the wolf just would not settle. He didn’t want to imagine Kurt standing in the shower with him, or the way the water would pebble on his smooth skin, bead up on nipples hardened by the cool water. He wanted Kurt to _be_ there. Kurt needed him, wanted him, he just knew that Blaine needed to get to him. _Right now!_

He pulled the orgasm out with a rough twist of his hand over his cock, gasping and shivering at the almost sting it left behind and Blaine slammed his hands against the shower wall in frustration because never had an orgasm left him so unsatisfied.

His blood still buzzed and his skin still felt too tight, like it was trying to move ahead and the rest of him was lagging behind. God he was in a fine state. He had to get a lid on things before he saw Kurt again or he’d… unbidden a vision came to him of the dining hall, of pinning Kurt up against the doors and—

“Blaine!” the sound of Wes’s muted shout pulled him from the vivid fantasy and like a man waking from sleep he fumbled to turn off the water and stumble out of the shower. He shook his hair to dry it, flinging water everywhere and jumped when pounding came at the bathroom door and Wes called again. “Blaine if you don’t come out in the next three seconds I’m coming in.”

Some confused part of him reacted to that with anger, the snarl curling his lip before he could stop it. This was his territory, Wes had entered without permission and was making threats…. He shook his head again, more to clear it than dry it this time and reasoned that Wes would have knocked and it was likely Blaine had not heard him over the noise of the shower and his preoccupation with coming as hard and as fast as he could. If only it had helped. If only Kurt were here. He should be. Blaine needed to find him. He could feel Kurt in his head, over the bond, plastered to him in every sense but the physical, and there was no doubt in his mind that Kurt needed him to come. The call was so strong that for a moment he forgot to breathe he was so intently focused on it. 

That was… that was bad, some distant part of his mind reminded him. This wasn’t normal. It meant something important that he was feeling this way but his head was too full to think, every available space rapidly being occupied by the thought of Kurt. Where _was_ Kurt? He needed—

“Blaine I’m serious!” Wes called one last time. “One… two…”

Like a drunken man Blaine stumbled to the door and jerked it open, believing Wes when he said he’d break it down on the count of three. 

Wes was holding a cub in his arms, and he seemed shocked to see him standing there for some reason, his eyes flying over the empty room behind him before they came back Blaine, who had gone stiff in the doorway as the scents from the room beyond were brought in with the draft from the window.

There was something in the air, something heavy and sinuous, and Blaine recognized the heat pheromones for what they were, but what made them truly enthralling was how complexly they blended with Kurt’s natural scent. It was too much, so much that for a moment the only thing Blaine could do was close his eyes and hold his breath. 

The call came again and this time he answered.

_“Kurt.”_

“Oh Christ,” he heard Wes groan and he was almost amused by it. At least he would have been if Wes weren’t standing in his way.

~*~*~

Emma could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. It grew heavier and heavier as she waited for Wes to return, making it hard to breathe as the feeling of panic threatened to overwhelm her. She shifted into her wolf skin, because it made her feel stronger and more assured, curling up in the bed and burying her nose in the sheets they’d slept on.

 _Wrong wrong wrong_ her instincts screamed and she squeezed her eyes shut, whining low as she tried to talk herself out of panic. Wes had an important position in the pack and with Blaine indisposed it was important he take care of things. She needed to be good for him.

Except… Emma raised her head, sniffing at the air and growling at what she found there. That was what was keeping her on edge she realized. As an omega she’d learned to recognize the signs of heat down to the earliest scent notes and that was definitely a rapidly progressing heat permuting the air. She stood, tail stiff and nose pointed as she hurriedly sniffed again, whining when she was able to pick out the base scent beneath the thick layer of pheromones.

Kurt, she realized, and then she could have kicked herself because she was a den mother. How could she not have recognized the signs that he was ready to go into heat? But she knew the answer to that. She’d been distracted by Wes, first the chance to be near to him so uninterruptedly on expedition and then by fear for him when he’d been injured.

Wes had ordered her to stay and for Emma that meant everything, it made it hard for her to climb off the bed, made each step she took feel like the soft pads of her paws were pressing on needles. She shouldn’t disobey her mate, she knew that. She shouldn’t put herself in danger when he’d asked her to stay. Wes had said Kurt was probably with Blaine, and if Kurt was in heat the last thing either of them would want would be to be interrupted but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she should have seen it coming, should have warned the poor man about what was about to happen to his body.

The thing was, Emma knew about heats, knew that the strength of them clouded the mind and that it was possible that Kurt wasn’t with Blaine at all and the heat itself was the reason Blaine couldn’t be reached. She couldn’t shake the thought that Kurt might be alone in a house filling up with alphas and that it would be her fault if anything happened to him. She’d feared all her life being caught in a moment of such extreme vulnerability, of being claimed against her will. How could she let that happen to someone else?

~*~*~ 

“Get a move on Heart,” Flint Wilson called down the hall towards the gaggle of teenage protégés who had just come banging through the front doors. They weren’t exactly late, but with the Alpha gone for the week Flint knew they’d gotten a little lazy about protocol and it was embarrassing with Harvey standing so close by staring on in disapproval. It was customary for master’s and protégés to enter the dining hall and to be seated together. Flint thought every alpha-master dreaded the day their protégé didn’t show up with the others. Lateness was something he made sure Joe knew he wouldn’t tolerate.

The teen hurried toward him, looking abashed at having to be called like an unruly child, despite the fact that the others were content to keep to an almost leisurely stroll, in no clear hurry to meet with their masters at the doors to the dining hall.

“Alpha,” Joe lowered his head briefly in a respectful greeting before turning and dutifully lowering his gaze as he greeted Harvey. “Headmaster Strand.” 

“Good morning Joseph,” Harvey greeted the teen his eyes raking over the others as the rest of the group arrived. “Where is Mr. Sterling?”

Flint had always been impressed with the way Harvey could dominate an entire crowd of teenage doms who largely outnumbered him. As the Headmasters cool eyes surveyed each of them the protégés practically quaked.

“Chandler was hogging our shower this morning…” Rory Flanagan mumbled just barely loud enough to be audible and Crawford’s protégé practically hissed at him like a spitting cat, elbowing the other boy sharply in the side.

“Chandler?” Adam arched a brow at his protégé and the boy’s cheeks flushed pink.

“Well I wouldn’t have had to if _Rory_ knew how to pull out without spraying everywhere like a runaway fireho-“ 

“That’s more than enough Mr. Khiel,” Harvey interrupted him with a clipped tone. Harvey pinned Crawford with a hard stare as he said, “I trust your alpha will have plenty to talk to you about later.”

The blond man arched one sandy brow and Flint could practically feel the insubordination rolling off of him in waves. He didn’t like it, didn’t like much of what was going on in the inner circle these days. Blaine’s father might have been a bastard but there had at least been structure in his day. There had been rules and the order that came with everyone knowing their place. Now it seemed like everyone down to the lowest convert had a mouth on them and Flint believed Harvey was right that it was due to a lack of proper leadership. 

Just as he’d come to expect Crawford had something to say to the Headmaster and it wasn’t nice, despite how pleasant his tone remained.

“If I have something to say to my protégé Harvey I’ll say it, I promise. I’m not shy.”

Flint sneered. No, _shy_ wasn’t Adam’s problem. A pain in the ass was more like it. Harvey was their elder, a vaunted and respected alpha with years of experience on them. Harvey had been around before either of them even knew how to piss in the woods and Crawford thought he was above him somehow. But then again Adam had always been a little too smug for Flint’s liking. 

He’d hoped they wouldn’t have to deal with each other for too long on account of the whole gay thing. Everyone with ears knew Khiel was game on the mating score but Adam wasn’t keen on mating with someone so much younger than him. That was strange and stupid in Flint’s opinion (because how old did a person have to be before they knew how to take care of a den) but that was Adam’s business, not his. If Adam didn’t want to mate with someone younger it meant he’d have to leave the pack to search for a mate and it was no real loss as far as Flint was concerned.

It still irritated him that now that David was fading Blaine was relying more on Adam. A _foreigner_! Sure pack was pack, but Flint had been born and raised right here in Ohio. The pack was everything to him, in his very blood, and Blaine chose Adam? 

“Besides, Jeff is not the only one not here or did no one notice?” Adam announced with that superior look of his that so grated on Flint’s nerves. But he was right, the alpha had to concede; because Wes wasn’t there either and neither was Noelle. “But there’s no need to worry yet is there? No one is technically late yet because Blaine’s not here either.”

“Strange,” Harvey muttered and the two men shared a look. It was strange indeed. It reeked of trouble and Flint could see the anxiousness of the other alpha-master’s in their eyes despite their pretenses at normalcy as they waited, the minutes trickling by. 

The protégés were restless with hunger as the smell of breakfast wafted out from the dining hall. Even Flint felt hunger tighten his belly as more and more time passed.

There was something strange going on, but it was hard to think past the dull insistent ache of hunger… that in itself was strange. He was not a starved stray to find himself out of control at the scent of a meal… oh but _what_ a meal they must have prepared. Flint found himself closing his eyes and trying to decipher what had been prepared for breakfast that morning, dragging in the sweet scent that permuted the air but he could not pick it apart. It was sugar and spices, salt and musk, wind, rain, grass, damp earth, skin and sweat…

“Heat,” he growled the words as the realization struck. “Headmaster one of the submissives must have gone into heat.” He knew he was right when he looked around at the others. Most of the protégés looked like zombies, with glazed eyes and flaring nostrils. The alphas had circled their beta peers, driven by the same biological tug that Flint felt to find the source of that beautiful wonderful scent and roll in it. His teeth ached with the need to lengthen, to hold down the body calling so gorgeously to him and make it his.

He beat back the wild thoughts, knowing that now more than ever he needed to keep his head clear. Subs were taught to keep careful track of their heats but accidents happened from time to time and it was their duty now to protect whatever poor thing was going into heat in a house full of alphas. He couldn’t do much for whoever it was but to contain himself and his protégé while the house omegas got the situation under control.

Flint grabbed Joe and it was a good thing, as the teen was getting more aggressive with Trent than was safe. Joe had grabbed the other boy’s wrist to sniff it, growling low when he didn’t find what he was looking for. He’d grabbed the other protégé by the hair in order to bend his neck for the inspection of his nose. Trent smartly didn’t move, breathing a sigh of relief when Flint tore the other boy away from him. Flint dragged a struggling Joe into the dining hall and turned back to help with the others. Chandler had found himself in a similar predicament as Trent but the hot headed beta didn’t show the same sense as he schoolmate. 

Kitty and Sugar had grabbed him by either arm and were trying to warn each other off with angry growls. Kitty lashed out with one open palm, swiping at the other girl with extended nails and Chandler recoiled with a fearful whine. Sugar had let go of the arm she’d held when Kitty’s claws had struck her and the teenage beta took advantage of its sudden freedom, punching Kitty in the shoulder until the alpha female let him go with a pain filled gasp. The beta didn’t waste any time fleeing backwards, but they were in too close quarters and Chandler couldn’t get far enough away before Kitty was leaping on him. Harmony shouted her protégés name and Flint saw the alpha female moving toward them but Adam reached them first, yanking Kitty off of a struggling Chandler and all but tossing her at her alpha-master. 

His eyes had gone gold, the wolf all but leaping out of him, as he crouched over Chandler’s fallen form, warning them all away with a hair raising growl. Flint wasn’t sure if Adam was any more lucid than Kitty at this point, because the way he scooped Chandler up and held him caged within his arms screamed possession and Flint could not miss the way he kept sniffing at the boy’s hair as if searching for something.

The pheromones were enough to muddle all of their thoughts… Flint knew that. This sort of confusion and these volatile reactions were common but all it required was a bit of focus. 

Focus.

If the sub was close there wouldn’t have been any doubt, they’d have zeroed in on which one of them it was almost instantly. Flint moved away from the chaos as the other alpha-masters wrestled their charges into the dining hall, annoyed more and more with them all. Every thought in his mind was on the sub that was the cause of all this mayhem. Why weren’t any of the others getting it? Did they not smell how _right_ he was? Harvey was the last to enter the dining room, his eyes catching Flint’s and holding for one long moment before he shut the door quietly behind himself.

Flint flushed with pride, steeling his spine with purpose. Harvey understood. That poor beautiful creature was somewhere else in the house and they were all alone. Flint frowned as he stripped and pictured it. They would be hot with the fever of want, they would be dripping with it, their body screaming to be filled and when they weren’t they’d clench around emptiness and there would be pain… so much pain. He felt heavy in his head, crazy with the thought of leaving something so gorgeous unclaimed, unfilled.

They should be found he decided as he walked, following his nose to god only knew where. They _needed_ to be found. Flint was an alpha, Flint knew how to fill up a sub, how to snuff out the burn. They needed to be found. But they weren’t here. No… they were somewhere else in the house. Poor beautiful creature.

_“Don’t worry Pretty. I’ll find you.”_

And Flint set out to do just that.

~*~*~  
“ _Blaine_ ” Kurt called, and as it had since Lina had tied him to the bed the call went unanswered. He was shouting into fog, his thoughts echoing back to him in a muddled din and that wasn’t right. He kept flexing his arms and trying to pull them down to touch himself where he was slick and heavy feeling but Lina had tied him. Why had she done that? Why was she trying to stop him getting to Blaine? Couldn’t she see how much he needed his alpha right now? Kurt needed to feel his skin all over and Blaine needed to plug him up because he swore the universe had ripped a hole in him and he was emptying from the inside out he felt so desperately empty.

Groaning Kurt tried to roll out of the bed but the ties prevented him and he opened bleery eyes to look for Lina, finding her sitting at the foot of the bed with her spine straight and her ears alert like the best of guard dogs. He glared at her.

“Untie me,” he rasped through a tight throat and the she-wolf turned her great head to blink at him. “I’ll find Blaine. Lina I need…”

 _“I can’t protect you and watch you at the same time.”_ She licked his bare leg before turning back towards the door. _“And even so, you have conflicting wants Kurt. You want sex but no cubs. You were running from him before and that is reason enough to keep you tied. You don’t want to risk trying to run again.”_

“I won’t,” he hastily promised, the heaviness in his abdomen building again like a wave heading to shore. “That’s… that’s stupid. I want him. I want him right now!”

_“That was never in question, but do you want his children?”_

Kurt’s stomach rolled, a quick but strong burst of panic welling up inside of him. He cried out, pulling franticly at his bonds until that wave that had been building crashed inside of him and the feelings of terror were replaced by warm insistent darts of pleasure. 

_“Do you see now?”_

The only thing Kurt saw was stars, blurred and brilliant in front of his eyes as the need started to build again. Oh god he didn’t care anymore. He didn’t care if Blaine came inside of him and they had a _million_ cubs as a result just so long as he was inside him. Kurt had been wanting him for so long, for forever, and he was going to erupt if he couldn’t have him. 

_“Blaine”_ He called unconsciously again, arching his back as another wave broke leaving him tingling and oversensitive, his breath coming in sharp pants.

And then Blaine finally answered.

_“Kurt.”_

It was just at that moment, as relief was washing over Kurt that outside the door something moved. It was as if the air inside the room was sucked into a vacuum. He and Lina both went still as outside someone scratched against the door whining low. _Oh please oh please oh please Blaine Blaine Blaine Blaine…_ his thoughts seemed to meld into the sound of his heart drumming loudly in his ears as Lina stood with her ears flat, a growl of warning rumbling low in her throat.

“No…” he whimpered. Why was she warning him away! He needed him, he could weep with it he needed it so bad. “Blaine?” he called weakly to the person outside the door. When their scent finally reached him the response was instantaneous. Lina’s growl went up about four notches in volume and Kurt’s body rejoiced, sparking like an uncovered plug because that was an alpha outside the door and that was everything he wanted in the world right now. But there was something else happening inside of him too. There was also unease mounting, fear building up dark and cloying along with revulsion in his core because that was not _his_ alpha. That was not Blaine outside the door and the feeling of wrongness slithered inside of him like a snake.

 _“Kurt?”_ The wrong voice filled his head. _“Open the door Kurt.”_

 _“Merda!”_ Kurt yelped as the door began to rattle in earnest and Lina leaped onto the bed and stood over him. She looked immense from this vantage and it was with no small amount of fear that he tugged at his bindings when she lunged at the rope tying him to the bed and yanked. She was not gentle as she tore at the bindings on his left wrists, the knots tightening around his flesh and squeezing a pained shout from him until finally the rope snapped free. _“I’m sorry, but Blaine may not come in time. I will try to keep this one away as long as I am able but I have to leave you with a chance.”_ And then Lina lunged for the tie binding his right wrist.

~*~

Flint threw his weight against the door, snarling in rage at it, the satisfying rattle and splinter of the wood not coming fast enough. Behind that door was Kurt, a beautiful submissive who was just waiting for someone to fill him up and mark him and Flint didn’t care that he smelled like another alpha or that he was a convert. Just _smell_ him, he was all wolf now and he was unclaimed. Flint would cover every inch of that warm needy body with his and wash away every last trace of the other alpha with his come; he’d fill Kurt so full he wouldn’t even remember his own name, let alone anyone that had come before Flint.

But first he would get through this fucking door.

 _“Come on pretty thing. Open the door. I can help you.”_ He coaxed ramming it again, his strength causing the wood to groan and splinter some more on its hinges. His next charge finally broke the lock, a resounding crack filling the hall as the door snapped open and banged into the opposite wall.

 _“Flint!”_ He thought he heard a woman’s voice shout as his momentum carried him inside the room but then there was someone barreling into him. The she-wolf took him by surprise; Flint hadn’t detected her at all, what with Kurt’s scent overpowering his senses. That was the only reason why such a small omega female managed to bowl him over, forcing him to scramble backwards and back into the hall with her angry bites, snapping at him as quick and precisely as a cobra.

But Flint quickly got his bearings and it would be a cold day in hell before he let an omega female, of all things, keep him from his prize. The woman was no guard wolf, her attacks instinctive with no real battle strategy behind them, just the protective instincts of the wolf. So Flint let her get over him, suffered the sting of her bite as her teeth tore at his shoulder because when she did she made the mistake of leaving her neck open. 

Throwing his weight into her and lunging for her throat was easy, grasping it and crushing was even easier, but Flint had no time to celebrate the victory because no sooner had he begun to crush the throat of one there was another tackling his flank. 

This female was small and sandy coated, a familiar scent clinging to her, triggering a warning in his brain. She belonged to another alpha, ergo it was dangerous to harm her, but she was holding nothing back as she bit and slashed at him with fury. It was either stop her or give up his pursuit of the beta. Rage bubbled hot and savage within him and Flint decided he didn’t care who she belonged to. Wes should take better care of his things if he didn’t want them hurt.

He let himself fall toward the omega woman, his larger weight bearing her down and pinning her to the floor. Flint expected the feeling of being pinned by a dominant to immobilize her and it did. Emma curled in on herself, whining plaintively as he gripped her with the full force of his dominance. To Emma it felt like being crushed, slowly smothered, and it was a cruelty he’d never visit on his own sub but this was different. This was survival of the fittest at its most basic. She had challenged him for his prize; and this was her losing.

The omega whined and writhed and Flint watched grinning in satisfaction when her twitches and whines finally stilled. The commotion had drawn others, mostly members of the staff, but they were good little omegas. Their whines were high and pleading, their horror as heavy in the air as Kurt’s heat but none of them were stupid enough to get close to him. That was as it should be. Only the strongest would lead, only a strong alpha could protect their mate… Emma should have chosen better. 

“Flint?” It was the calm way the man said his name that jarred Flint enough to release the woman. David Thompson stood not three feet away from him, a crowd of wimping omegas at his back. Always his gaze was cool, always there was something not quite present about the way he spoke; but not now. Now his eyes were no longer empty. Now they were full of rage and his voice was as sharp and hard as steel as he ordered Flint to let Emma go.

He’d released the silly woman out from under his dominance the moment she’d lost consciousness. He didn’t care about her. He wanted the beta. The beta was ready for it, screaming for it, and Flint deserved him! David might not want the beta for himself but he was still one of Blaine’s oldest friends. Blaine wanted him and that was all either of them needed to know.

He lunged for David just as the other alpha whipped out a pocket knife he’d kept concealed on his person, probably in case of being attacked without time enough to strip and shift. He twisted his torso just so, so that most of Flint’s weight caught him to one side and not in the center of his chest. They went crashing to the floor in a tangle of limbs. He had David outweighed and out gunned but David was no unseasoned omega. He knew how to fight with or without his wolf skin. David was uncommonly quick with that blasted knife. He kept the large wolfs teeth and claws mostly at bay with his forearm braced against the lycan’s chest, using the other to cut Flint across his side and then once viciously across his snout when the wolf’s teeth snapped dangerously close to his face. 

But a human body was always at disadvantage to a wolf one, and the idea was always to survive only long enough to get a chance to shift. On the ground already the likelihood of that happening was slim and Flint knew once he disabled one of David’s arms he’d have the opening he’d need. So when David got his knees under Flint’s belly and managed to thrust the snarling and snapping wolf away with enough force to send him skidding across the stone floor, most of his snarling and the show of his teeth was for just that: show. He knew he’d already won. Human bodies were just far too frail. 

When Flint charged again David twisted to protect his vulnerable points, chest, belly, and throat, but Flint was aiming to disarm now and not to maim. There wasn’t much David could do to stop him without exposing his fatal areas. Flint’s jaws closed around his left arm as they collided and blood flooded his mouth, the salt and sweetness of it bursting over his taste buds. He did not mind at all that David managed to thrust that knife into his flank with enough force to make his whole leg go numb. 

It was not a fatal wound and it did nothing to lessen the sweetness of the other alpha’s roar of pain as Flint crushed the bones of his arm and yanked him into a more vulnerable position. That beautiful cry…. that was the sound of defeat. Though it was a sweet sound indeed it was better gurgled, which it became quite quickly when Flint closed his jaws around David’s throat and crushed.

It happened too quickly for Flint to stop it. One moment he was tasting victory, David’s throat buckling between his jaws, and the next pain was spiking through him on both ends and he was being torn violently in two. 

Or so it felt with one leg caught in the maw of one wolf and the back of his head caught in another. For the first time he felt fear as the scent of the Alpha surrounded him, the razors edge of it just sharp enough to clear his mind for one agonizing moment as the large black wolf tore him away from his kill and shook him like he weighed nothing more than paper.

Pain splintered through Flint as he collided with the ground. Neither of his adversaries gave him the chance to get up. Wes was already lunging at him and Blaine’s eyes were burning into him like flames, pinning him in place with the same effortlessness Flint had once held Emma. 

He was going to die. He knew that. There was no use to pleading. He didn’t.

~*~*~  
There was a moment when Lina felt teeth around her throat, felt the excruciating pain of being suffocated and having her esophagus crushed but then she was being released and dropped like a sack of potatoes. She still could not breathe, the effort of doing so sending mind numbing pain throughout her whole body and she knew that she was still going to die if she didn’t shift, just slower than if Flint had finished crushing her. 

For a moment she almost wanted to let it happen. She had not known how tired she was until the opportunity to rest came and it seemed so very wonderful a thing, to close ones eyes and sleep. But then a vision of her son flashed before her eyes. Her little Benito with his sweet smile and his curious nature. He was so much like her, and so much like the best of his father, always happy, always enthusiastic, and curiously competitive despite his sensitive nature. No, now was not the time for sleep. Not yet.

Shifting was slow and excruciating, every muscle screaming as they twisted, her bones popping and stretching and pushing their broken fragments into new shapes. It could as easily have killed her as Flint’s teeth but it was the only chance she had and it was a risk they all knew to take. 

The pain was so blinding that she didn’t even realize she’d made it through the change until she was waking again. She had passed out immediately after the change (almost during) and when she woke again she was chilled to the bone, her body dank with sweat as she lifted her head weakly to survey her surroundings. Her gaze flew first to the doorway of the bedroom. It was still hanging open and to her immense relief she could see Kurt inside working as quickly on freeing himself from the bed as his befuddled mind and shaking body would allow. She’d managed to weaken the rope quite a bit before Flint got the door open, and she could tell that he would be free soon, would probably have been free sooner if not for his weakened and confused condition.

With the reminder of Flint her eyes flew to the sounds of battle on the other side of the hall and her stomach churned at the sight of the pair of black wolves tearing at Flint’s bloody carcass. Some of the house maids had gathered around two fallen forms, a sandy coated she-wolf- sweet lovely Emma- and a tall man whose struggles for breath rattled obscenely in the air like a bad car engine. She realized with horror that it was David.

Lina was certain her body was in shock, as it was the only explanation she had for why the horror and grief she felt pressing around her from all sides did not cripple her. She watched numbly as her Alpha and his Beta abandoned their kill, as their limbs twisted and shifted once more to become men. Demons, her father would have said, and they looked it covered in the blood of their once comrade, but no one seeing the look in Wes’s eyes as he went to Emma, seeing the lost look in Blaine’s eyes as he grasped the hand of his oldest friend and pressed their brows together would have agreed.

There was so much crying all around her, within her, and there was no way to know who started the howling first. It seemed that it started with Blaine, but just as quickly Wes had joined the mournful sound, and then all around the house and all around the forest the cry picked up. It burst out of her with a life of its own as tears dripped down her cheeks and she huddled on the floor. 

“Stop all the clocks…” she whispered under her breath, the poem her papa had read every year on the anniversary of her mother’s death sliding effortlessly past her lips. She’d hid in her room and whispered the words into her bed the day Christian had been executed, searching for release in a moment where comfort was not possible. “Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.”

Wes had stopped howling. He merely sat, stroking his hand through Emma’s fur, silently pleading for her to wake. He looked so much like Benito at that moment, nothing but a lost little boy wanting to be held but there were no mother’s arms for him, his comfort lying broken in his arms. Blaine was the same, simply holding David and not moving. Unlike Wes his suffering was not lapping at her senses, sucking at her and pulling her into the grief opening up in his chest. He was the Alpha, for him to suffer so was dangerous to the rest of them. He was closed off, silent and reverent as he watched his friend slip from the world. Whatever thoughts they shared as they stared into each other’s eyes were for them and for them alone.

~*~*~  
 _“I don’t want you to go.”_

_“I am though.”_

_“Try harder. You’re not trying David!”_

_“Easy for you to say.”_

_“David please.”_

_“It’s not your fault. The day she died, I wanted to die too… but you needed me…”_

_“Well I need you now! Are you listening? David!”_

_“No you don’t. You’ll be okay now.... you’ve got what you need. Tell Wes I’m sorry.”_

_“David!”_

_“Don’t be so scared. I’m not”_

_“No! Don’t you quit on me don’t you quit don’t you- ”_

_“Blaine…let it go…. Please.”_

~*~*~

It was strange, though perhaps a sign, that David’s eyes looked warmer in death than they had for the past year of his life. A sob short and rough attempted to claw its way out of his throat and Blaine squeezed his eyes shut and choked it back down.

“Alpha?” Blaine shuddered when a soft hand touched his shoulder. He looked up to find Lina crouching beside him, gazing at him sorrowfully. But it was not to David that she looked but to the doorway of the bedroom beyond as she said, “Alpha you must-”

A pained cry left him as the rest of the world flooded back and with it Kurt’s scent and the driving instinct to claim, but Blaine pulled the wolf back, repulsed by the ferocity of his desires in the face of his grief. How could he even think about something so coarse, so animal, when his oldest friend had once again paid the price for his mistakes?

“I can’t…” He didn’t know who he was pleading to.

“You must.” Lina’s tone left no room for argument, anger bringing the wolf behind her eyes. _“I did not risk my life, and my son his mother, for you to be a child now! You snap out of it Blaine Anderson or I will not be responsible for what I do!”_

Lina was only a year or two older than he was but even though Blaine’s mother had certainly never had the gumption to yell at him quite like that he recognized the motherly tone and had he not been so grateful to her he would have been embarrassed by how quickly the riot in his head calmed. He could not think of David, or Wes or anything else right now because there was Kurt to think of. Kurt’s heat would not pause for grief and he was not safe there in the house. That left only two options: claim him, or get him to the safe house.

And Blaine did think about doing the latter, he really did, because this was not the way either of them had wanted their mating to go (if ever there was a time when Kurt could not consent it was now) but he knew he wouldn’t the instant he stepped into the room. He couldn’t. All Blaine could do for a moment was stare at him, drinking in the sight of him long and pale and bare upon the bed and so very very at his mercy. Arousal spiked as he realized that Kurt was twisted away from the door, his concentration fixed, because one arm was tied to the head rest. He was chewing on the loop around his wrist, the skin bruised and flushed an angry red where the rope squeezed too tight.

Displeasure flooded Blaine as he stepped toward the bed and alerted by his movements Kurt whipped around, scrambling as far backward on the bed as the rope would allow. His eyes were wide with fright and wild, their bright brilliant blue letting him know that he was all instincts, the wolf taking charge while the man hid somewhere inside. The wolf recognized him but it was nervous, put on edge by the sounds of battle and the sight of the blood that stained Blaine’s skin. Kurt tried to yank away when Blaine reached for his wrist, the rope tightening further and a cry of pain hissing out his lips.

“Shhh,” Blaine caught his arm in a firm grip, forcing his touch to remain gentle as he pried the knot loose. He did not release Kurt’s wrist when the knot fell away, though Blaine felt the shake in his limbs and felt the frantic swirl of his emotions begin to surround him again and shut out the rest of the world. “Shhh,” he soothed again drawing Kurt’s arm towards his mouth and lowering his head to press a kiss against the bruised skin.

It was an apology for more than his physical hurt. It was an apology for all the struggles that were ahead, for not being able to give him the gift of time and the romantic sort of claiming night that he deserved. But Blaine could give him this. He could give him this tenderness, this unspoken promise that no harm would ever come to him while he was in his care.

Kurt was not the only one shaking when he climbed onto the bed, settling himself across from the wide eyed beta who was still shrinking back from him. The effort it took to remain gentle as he reached for the abandoned wash cloth by the bedside and began wiping at the burns the rope had left was almost herculean but he concentrated on taking measured breaths. In. Out. In. Out. Anything but focus on the softness of Kurt’s skin.

“Blaine?” Kurt’s voice was a bit lost, breathy and hoarse like he’d run a race, and Blaine looked up to see that the blue of the wolf was fading, Kurt’s more complex blend of blues and greys slowly emerging. He shushed him again, ignoring the tremble in his voice as he raised Kurt’s right arm to his mouth and slowly licked over the wound. Kurt’s skin against his tongue was slick and soft, rough and slightly hotter where the rope had chaffed. He licked to heal but he could not resist the temptation to taste, to press and stroke the steady pulse in his veins, as Kurt shuddered and his scent filled Blaine’s nose.

He lowered Kurt’s arm with a soft groan as he reached for the other, administering the same treatment until he could not resist the desire to kiss over his trembling flesh, pressing his lips up his arm as his tongue darted over his flesh with increasing urgency. Kurt’s shivery moan as Blaine kissed over this shoulder was like a punch, the heat in his groin intensifying as his body hardened in response. 

Too quickly his teeth were extended, too quickly he’d pushed Kurt back onto the bed and crouched over him, his face buried against his neck gulping in his scent as his muscles locked, torn between the instinct to seize and to protect. 

Blaine did not know how long he stayed that way, straining to hold himself still while the wolf howled and scratching to be free, terrified of what he would do when he bit Kurt for the first time. There would be no going back, no more gentleness and there had been so little of that. He had meant for this to be so very different.

Beneath him Kurt shifted. He raised his hands to cup Blaine’s cheeks and it was only when he opened them to see Kurt’s eyes gazing back at him, clear and bright, that Blaine realized that he’d shut his own. Kurt’s thumbs stroked away the wetness on his cheeks, wiped away the tears and the blood with a slow tender stroke.

“Shhh. Why are you so afraid?” he quietly asked. “I’m not.” And as Blaine searched his eyes he saw that it was true, there was no fear in them. There was just Kurt and all his heart open to him, reaching for him, and Blaine wondered if this was not one of the world’s great wonders, the depths that made up a single man. 

“Courage?” He heard himself whisper and they shared a slow smile.

“Courage.” Kurt nodded.

~*~  
When Blaine kissed the place where his pulse beat rapidly against his skin Kurt shivered. When his teeth dug into the skin Kurt’s eyes flew open wide and he screamed. Lightning seemed to strike them both, racing between both their bodies in a thunderous current.

Kurt finally understood what Blaine had meant about the bite being a tool because in that moment of blinding light and heat they were forged together as if their bodies were steel, to be melted and fused together into something new. 

He knew also that whatever the two of them made would be a thing of brilliance, for they had been made for this moment, made for each other and the rightness of their union sang in both their blood like a song. He could hear the others singing behind the drumming in his ears, long low beautiful howls of wolf song, and the wolf within him stirred yet again. He gave in to it like before, only this time was different.

This time there was only joy in letting go.


	25. Chapter 23: Mate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I will love thee beyond my dying day. My dear I will love thee until the end of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Herein lay mostly smutt with a side of plot. Smutt is one of those challenging parts of writing for me. I tend to want everything to have deep meaning and to be very poetic in nature which is fine and all that, but sometimes the best part of sex is its baseness. Lol, and I definitely wanted the intercourse between my lycans to be rather stripped down and leaning on the animalistic side so fingers crossed. Also, something to charge to your nerd card, in one of the many versions of the Isolde and Tristan legend, Isolde has Tristan dress up like a peasant and help her escape to Arthur's castle and at one point he carries her on his back through a bog. I always got such a kick out of that story I decided to keep it :) I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

When the white light cleared from his eyes he was met with the hot insistent gaze of the alpha above him. Before they had teetered at an edge, now they fell pulled by a sharp spike of need that originated somewhere that defied the lines of both their bodies.  
  
They were one body as Blaine rose above him, as he grasped Kurt’s arms and pinned them back flat against the bed. The movement was rough, a command in itself, and Kurt obeyed even when Blaine’s hands were gone. He had been thrust into the depth of an ocean and Blaine was the water, molded to every line and curve of him, impressed and saturated into ever crevice of his skin and even that was not close enough. The heart pounding in his chest could consume the answering drum of Blaine’s heartbeat and he’d want to be closer still. But his heart had no teeth, just a steady furious beat and a will to follow.  
  
A warm, hot mouth worked greedily at his throat, deepening the mark Blaine’s teeth had left as Kurt gasped and arched under Blaine’s weight. He was being pulled out of himself again, the thirst for fulfillment raging through him with something like vengeance. Too much time spent apart. He whimpered as his body clenched down on nothing, the slickness he felt between his thighs a signal of his readiness. He was so _ready_. He lifted his hips in pursuit of relief almost the same moment that Blaine grasped his hips and pulled them in line with his mouth.  
  
Blaine began slow almost exploratory licks over his sex, and Kurt involuntarily jerked. He tossed his head back as his body tightened and his skin prickled with every swipe of Blaine’s warm tongue.  
  
“Oh…” he gasped as Blaine yanked him closer, diving his tongue ever deep inside. There was no room for embarrassment over the way Blaine all but buried his face down there, sniffing as if to memorize the smell, lapping at the fluid evidence of his need and groaning his want into Kurt’s body.  
  
“Oh god that’s… Blaine!” Kurt’s voice went high and desperate as Blaine’s tongue flicked over the small nub, once hidden between his lips, now the sole benefactor of Blaine’s attention.  
  
 _“Touch me.”_ Blaine didn’t say it, so much as he needed it, but between them now it was one and the same.  
  
A desperate moan tore out of him as his hands flew to Blaine’s hair, fingers grasping for a hold on dark curls, as Blaine lapped and sucked at his clit. Kurt couldn’t help the wanton motion of his hips. Everything was getting so tight and the pressure so _heavy_. Though he panted a plea that might have been stop his body had other ideas, his hands pulled Blaine ever closer, the vibration of the alpha’s lips sending pulses of pleasure deep inside his body.  
  
Relief finally came in the form of a brilliant shattering orgasm that left him so utterly boneless he fell back onto the bed like spilled water, his throat still stinging from the force of his shout.  
  
Kurt lay on the bed, fighting to regain his breath, basking in the tingling warmth of post coitus. All around him was the smell of sex, intermingled strongly with the scent of his alpha and a smile slow and content spread on his face.  
  
Blaine was making quiet sounds as he lapped up the evidence of Kurt’s pleasure, the strokes of his tongue gentle but rapid, like he couldn’t get enough of the bittersweet taste. If he could pour himself, spirit and all, into a glass of water he’d do it if only to quench Blaine’s thirst, to see him from the inside, to be ever closer still.  
  
When he raised his head to meet Kurt’s silent gaze the motion was dizzy and Kurt’s grin widened, pleased to have such a visible effect on its mate. Blaine returned the smile as he crawled back up the bed, Kurt shuffling so that he wasn’t hanging quite so far off the end, neither of them able to take their eyes off the other. Blaine lay quietly next to him and slid one arm behind Kurt’s back, cradling his head against his chest.  
  
The urge to be taken was still there but the fire was at a simmer now, and Kurt could only be grateful for the temporary relief his orgasm had brought because as much as he wanted more, the way they fit together was perfect. There was something so beautiful about simply holding Blaine like this and being held. His whole body tingled from his throat to his head and down to his toes and the touch of Blaine’s skin against somehow brought with it both the soothing of cooling and the comfort of warmth.  
  
The hard length of Blaine pressed against his thigh was all the evidence he needed that Blaine was still unfulfilled, somehow even now holding himself back to give Kurt this moment of reprieve, tenderness, and lucidity. He smiled against the curve of Blaine’s shoulder and kissed the skin softly.  
  
His body was tight and hot in Kurt’s arms but his fingers where like the kiss of silk as they trailed over Kurt’s flesh, lightly brushing down his arm until Kurt brought it up to entwine their fingers.  
  
For a moment he stared at them, the slight contrast in the hues of their skin, the bridge their fingers made and the way they looked as if they’d been formed to slot together just so.  
  
This was what being whole felt like. This body entwined with his was where he drew his strength, this heart beating against his was where he found his rhythm, and this mind brushing against his was where he found his echo. He’d never known how much of himself he did not know until that very moment. He knew with quiet certainty that now he could never be without again.  
  
It was not as frightening a thought as it had once been. What was to fear? Loving was as natural as breathing. The love between them as inevitable as their next breath, and even when that quit that was not their end, for now they were endless. Who would want to go back to the confines of mortal skin after this?  
  
 _“Don’t cry.”_ Blaine’s eyes were boring into him as he reached up to wipe the moisture gathering in Kurt’s eyes.  
  
 _“I just didn’t know I could feel like this.”  
  
“It’s a lot to adjust to. We can wait as long as you need.”_  
  
Kurt huffed a quiet laugh.  
  
“Thank you,” he murmured aloud, his lips brushing against Blaine’s tanned skin. “For being who you are… for giving me this.”  
  
Blaine shivered against him and Kurt closed his eyes, feeling the boil begin again in his blood, the rising of need.  
  
He lifted his head to look into Blaine’s eyes, to find the wolf he _wanted_ there. “I need you to fuck me,” he said and every instinct Blaine had screamed in agreement. “Don’t hold back. Don’t try to protect me anymore. I know what you are and I want you. All of you.”  
  
“Are you sure?” Blaine’s voice was thick, his hold on his restraint thin.  
  
“God yes,” Kurt breathed as he took Blaine’s hand and guided it downward, sliding it between his wet folds. Blaine’s breath hitched, the amber of his eyes glowing bright and hot.  
  
Without warning he pressed a finger into the heat of Kurt’s sex and Kurt’s eyes went wide, a little gasp and then a wanton groan pulled from him. When he pushed back Blaine quickly added a second finger and pushed deeper into the seductively tight heat of Kurt’s body.  
  
Kurt let his head drop against Blaine’s shoulder and instinctively turned to bear his neck when he felt Blaine lick at it, his nose nuzzling the soft skin of his throat as he let Kurt fuck himself on his fingers. He knew instinctively what Blaine was searching for each time he nuzzled at his neck like that and dragged in the scent of his skin. He was searching for the scent of readiness, of absolute and total submission and though Kurt had never wanted anything so badly in his life as Blaine’s cock just then, Blaine just waits, making _him_ do all the work.  
  
The third finger had Kurt panting and the fourth all but growling.  
  
“Please… I need… Blaine, do it, fuck me, hold me down, I need it, please…” Kurt whined between moans and it snapped something within Blaine. He turned Kurt around with so much force it felt for a moment like the world had flipped upside down. Then, using both arms to draw Kurt up so he was resting on arms and knees, Blaine’s fingers were back at his clit and stroking until it was almost too much.  
  
Kurt gripped the sheets of the bed below him, panting through the haze of heat, trying vainly to fill the dawning ach in his body but Blaine’s hands held his hips in a firm grasp.  
  
“Please” Kurt begged, as Blaine jerked him back against his groin, grinding their bodies together. “Ple- oh god!” Blaine pushed in, in one motion, hard and fast, and the air rushed from Kurt’s body. All that stuff Allie had taught them about lycan’s being anatomically different than humans? Absolutely, marvelously, one hundred percent true.  
  
He was so _full_. He wanted to cry when Blaine pulled back, slowly, agonizingly slowly, and entered again at the same torturous pace. Kurt writhed, body greedy for more, harder faster, but Blaine kept a steady pace, gripping his hips so tight his nails drew blood. Kurt could feel how sharp they’d gotten, the wolf rising to the surface the closer Blaine got to losing control and he shivered at the sting, the thought of the lasting marks they’d leave only fueling his desire.  
  
Blaine bent forward and Kurt tensed instinctively the moment he felt the heat of Blaine’s breath against the tender bite on his neck. Then Blaine was biting down, growling when he felt Kurt’s hips stutter and heard him cry out as his body jolted with the intensity of his pleasure.  
  
Far from stop Blaine kept thrusting into him, faster now than before, fucking him through each brilliant bolt of shock, fucking him until he could feel Kurt’s walls tightening and his muscles spasm around his cock.  
  
His arms gave out and Kurt would have sprawled beneath him on the bed if Blaine had not caught him, holding him up with one arm and strength no human male would have possessed. All Kurt could hear over the thundering over his blood in his ears was _mine, mine, mine_ and he whimpered, grinding weakly back against him, meeting every thrust, because _yes, yes, yes_ he was.  
  
“Blaine!” he shouted straining upwards, the waves of one orgasm building into the crescendo of another. Blaine’s grip on him was steel, effortlessly pulling Kurt’s body back onto his and the arousal he felt at being used that way was almost as shocking as the power he felt surging through his veins and sparking like solar flares over the bond. Blaine’s feelings, he realized through the fog of heat, but it hardly mattered like this. He couldn’t tell where he ended and Blaine began.  
  
His third orgasm tore through him and he went limp as a noodle, gasping feebly for breath and hissing in sensitivity as Blaine withdrew. His stupid body almost seemed to cling, reluctant to give him up, and Kurt could already feel an insistent tug in his belly for something more and he groaned in frustration. This was hell! The best sort of hell admittedly, but god what did it want!  
  
“Make it stop,” he mumbled and Blaine shushed him as he pulled him up, sitting him so that they were facing each other, Kurt’s knees wrapped around his waist and Blaine’s still hard cock under him. Kurt was too exhausted to do anything about the way it felt or the itching desire he had to rub himself slick over it.  
  
Except his body didn’t appear to need instruction from his brain anymore because as Blaine pulled him against his chest, Kurt’s hips happily squirm against the heat of his erection without any sort of indication from him that he was up for another round.  
  
“Why won’t it stop?” he groaned deep when that first wave of now familiar need washed over him, pulsating through his whole body and leaving him panting and shuddering against Blaine’s chest.  
  
“Because we’re far from finished,” he heard Blaine say but his eyes, now eye level with the long expanse of his throat, were distracted by the sound of Blaine’s blood rushing through his veins, the suddenly overwhelming scent of it reminding Kurt that they were only half done.  
  
Blaine did not wear his bite.  
  
He was Blaine’s and always had been, but Blaine has always been _his_ as well. He was ready to experience it all again the other way, to surround Blaine like water.  
  
He licked his lips but held absolutely still. The wolf inside was poised to lunge, but this he knew he could not simply take. To try would be to invite death, for the Alpha could not be forced to bow. It would destroy everything he was, and Kurt did not want him destroyed. Kurt wanted him just as he was. So he waited.  
  
Blaine’s golden eyes burned into his and Kurt waited, unblinking, open to his scrutiny.  
  
“Mine” he finally said, leaning forward to kiss over the bite on Kurt’s neck and Kurt fought not to squirm though it sent tingles straight down to his toes.  
  
“Yours” he breathily agreed, waiting as Blaine met his eyes again. They were still bright amber but there was almost a softness to them now as he breathed deeply, staring at Kurt with such a depth of wonder he almost wanted to hide from it. He didn’t. He never could again.  
  
“Yours,” Blaine agreed softly, and almost as slow as the sound of their breaths he lowered his lashes until they fanned over his flushed cheeks and tilted his head. In that single show of submission he offered not just his neck but his life and the lives of every wolf in his care. Kurt could so easily kill him. He felt the pull of it in his teeth, in that animal spirit that was so much a part of him now, and his heart thundered in his chest with the rush of power he felt and he smiled.  
  
“Mine.”  
  
Kurt pressed his lips to Blaine’s skin, licking over the beat of his pulse, then biting and sucking until that lightning hot sensation of bonding was surging between them again and Blaine was crying out. Blaine’s consciousness seemed to rip through him in a brilliant whirlwind. Had he been standing he would have fallen over at the rush of power singing through his veins. He whimpered as it became too much too fast but could not let go, not for anything. He heard two hearts drumming in his ears and felt the weight of Blaine’s need crash into him and then they were both lost. Kurt released his neck and reached for his cock.  
  
Blaine’s fingernails turned claws dug deep into Kurt’s thighs but he didn’t care. He relished that pain, and the pain of sinking down onto Blaine’s cock once he’d finally found the right alignment and he groaned low, gripping Blaine’s shoulder’s tightly for leverage as he raised himself up, to sink back down, slowly beginning to ride him. The hot velvety slide had Blaine vanquishing all hint of restraint and brutally thrusting up into him. Blaine felt almost impossibly bigger than before, the stretch of being filled now carrying with it an uncomfortable burn, or maybe that was his body squeezing down on Blaine’s throbbing cock, desperate for something Kurt only knew how to strive for by bouncing on it in earnest.  
  
“Oh… oh god,that’s it. Fuck...”  
  
It wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough. Kurt’s body was winding tighter and tighter with the promise of another bone shattering orgasm but it wasn’t what he wanted. Oh dear sweet lord what did he want?!  
  
“Kurt,” Blaine groaning his name like that, that should be a forever thing. “Gonna come… gonna fill you up so everyone knows your mine!”  
  
Genius. Oh god his alphas was such a brilliant beautiful _genius_. Yes. Absolutely yes, that was what he wanted, what he needed more than anything. He wanted Blaine to come all over him and mark him in his scent. Only he never wanted to stop riding this dick and he wanted Blaine to come inside him even more than he wanted to roll in it.  
  
“Yes, come inside me,” he panted out his agreement. “Do it!” Kurt growled deep inside his chest and pushed down with all his might, impaling himself on Blaine with clear intention, and the friction was enough to make Blaine moan and bite down hard on Kurt’s shoulder.  
  
He lifted Kurt up once more, arms tight around his torso, and when Kurt sank down, Blaine shifted his hips until the angle was so intense it almost felt like it would rend him in two, stretching him almost beyond capacity. And then he was gone and Kurt was gasping and whimpering, his hole clenching around emptiness. Kurt shuddered and shook as Blaine guided him on his back, positioning himself until he was kneeling between Kurt’s legs up on his knees.  
  
Blaine silenced his whimpers with a hard kiss and then he entered him again without so much as a warning. His rhythm was merciless, forceful, savage even, as he thrust into Kurt until ever last inch of him was buried inside. Kurt keened with each powerful thrust, the heat pooling in his stomach again winding him tighter and tighter and tighter.  
  
He reached unconsciously for Blaine, his hand falling on one of the hands holding his knees apart and a moment later they were gripped together tight.  
  
And then Kurt arched his back, pushing back into the brutal motion of Blaine’s hips, coming with Blaine’s name on his lips. With Kurt convulsing around his cock, their hands gripped together tight, Blaine followed quickly after, the orgasm ripping through him with enough force that he saw stars behind his eyelids and all but collapsed on top of Kurt.  
  
~*~  
  
Blaine’s first coherent thought was that he should move off of Kurt and probably check to see if he was okay. He hadn’t been gentle at the end there and Kurt was sure to be sore. However at the first sign of him pulling out Kurt tightened his knees and groaned in protest, shooting him a baleful glare as if to ask him where he thought he was going.  
  
 _‘Biological urge’_ his exhausted mind supplied. The longer they stayed connected the more likely Kurt would conceive. He could picture that, Kurt swollen and big with his child, and a smug grin split his face. He shuffled until they were lying on their sides, cringing at every wince of pain Kurt could not quite hide. Blaine pulled him close, still buried inside him, and Kurt sighed, a soft little smile creeping over his face as he curled into Blaine’s chest.  
  
The second thing that registered with Blaine was how their scents had mixed and time they just laid there, breathing in and out and familiarizing themselves with the new scent of home. Blaine watched him, memorizing every last detail, reveling in the fact that he could predict each of his breathes like they shared the same lungs, and the fact that Kurt’s chuckle resonated somewhere right beneath his heart and had everything to do with how ridiculously fascinating Blaine seemed to find the simple act of breathing now that it was something they did together.  
  
All that mattered now was right there in the bed. All that mattered to Blaine in the world was this beautiful creature whose hand covered his as he held it tightly against his chest. The wonder slipped from his gaze as he survived the scratches and bruises marring Kurt’s skin, the streaks of red standing out and seeming to scream in the silence now that the fever had abated.  
  
He’d been bloody when he entered the room and he knew he’d hurt Kurt with his nails. Now Kurt was just as stained with it all as he was. He had no idea whose blood was whose anymore. And Kurt didn’t even know yet about David or Emma.  
  
“Blaine, if you’re going to make a habit of keeping us both awake you could at least be cheerful about it” Kurt bemoaned and Blaine blinked in surprise before his mouth twitched in the threat of a smile.  
  
He decided not to ruin the moment by telling Kurt of all that had transpired before their mating. Kurt still had hours left in his heat and neither of them would really have time for grief until it had passed. Perhaps it was selfish to put aside David’s end of in favor of celebrating their new beginning but nevertheless it _was_ the beginning of the rest of their lives together. It should begin with some happiness. David would have wanted that… at least Blaine hoped so.  
  
“I was awake you know….” Kurt spoke again his gaze more subdued this time. “I didn’t have any control. I couldn’t even get myself free it was like being drunk. But I could hear everything. I could still feel you, but you kept getting swallowed up by this fog. I thought I’d lose you. I was so afraid that I’d lose you and someone else would come, and when I felt how hurt you were I thought… Well I thought the worst. I don’t want to think about it yet Blaine. It isn’t going anywhere. Can’t we let it be for a while?”  
  
“Yeah,” he replied. “We could do that.”  
  
Blaine held Kurt tighter and curled into his warmth. Kurt wriggled closer and pressed a kiss just below his ear. He was smiling gently as he drifted off into the realm of sleep.  
  
As they often did, though he never quite remembered, Kurt’s dreams pulled him to another place far from his new home.  
  
~*~*~  
  
 _Lady Isolde stared out over the sea watching the waves crash against the cliff side of Camelot. She did not fear the water, for she had spent many hours of her youth swimming in the Irish sea, diving off the cliffs of her home at Amhrán. She contemplated for a desperate moment flinging herself from the tower window into the sanctuary of water below and letting the ocean carry her home. But there was Tristan to think of. There was no merciful sea to carry him from his prison cell in the dungeons of Arthur’s castle. And in truth, Ireland was no longer the safe haven it had been in her girlhood. Marke could follow her even there.  
  
When Arthur had come to conquer Ireland he had done so under the guise of a peace maker, but her father, King Anguish, had thought differently. He had said that Arthur was like a plague, spreading from land to land and gobbling them up, spreading their wealth amongst his vassals and Ireland would be no different. For years Anguish had fought against Arthur ‘s intrusion in Ireland but his armies were relentless and their resources had become depleted.  
  
Her mother had once hoped that the young king would be taken enough with her beauty that he would request for her hand; but any hope her mother had of securing their hold on their kingdom by wedding Isolde to their new overlord was dashed when Arthur spoke of his queen. It was decided during his first stay that Isolde would marry his vassal, King Marke of Cornwall and Isolde had known it was only to assure her father’s loyalty.  
  
She had not wanted to marry an English king and leave the freedom of her homeland for the confining walls of some stifling English castle, but such choices were rarely left in the hands of young women. She had been betrothed and subsequently married to a stranger despite every protest and every attempt to escape. It was only her mother’s plea to think of the fate of their people should they return to war with Arthur that made her comply in the end.  
  
She had never expected to love her husband, or any man for that matter, and certainly not the man sent to fetch her to her fate. Marke’s nephew Tristan was every bit the warrior she’d heard about, but somehow less than the monster she’d feared. He made the wildness in her sing.  
  
If only he had been a devil. Perhaps then she would not now be in mortal peril, dependent on the very man who had made a mockery of her father’s throne.  
  
A solid knock on the door pulled her away from the window. When the liveried guard entered to announce the arrival of the Queen, Isolde immediately straightened. She watched the Queen enter with uncertainty.  
  
She had come to Camelot because of the accusation that she had taken a lover. Isolde had known that neither she nor Tristan would receive a fair trial in Marke’s court, even had they been innocent. They were decidedly and most thoroughly not, and Isolde had resolved to feel no guilt on the matter for Tristan was hers. Her spirit knew it to be true and such things were dangerous to argue against, her mother had warned her so.  
  
She’d escaped in the middle of the dark of night and made the journey to Camelot to seek Arthur’s intervention. If the High King proclaimed her so, she would be innocent in the eyes of every man. It was a dangerous game to play, for infidelity to one’s husband was punishable by death and Marke was loyal to Arthur. If Arthur did not believe her she would have as good as sealed her own fate.  
  
She’d given her testimony with all the confidence she could muster and was waiting now to be called before him again to receive judgment. She had not expected a visit from his queen, who had not so much as spoken back in the throne room.  
  
She had heard of the loveliness of Guinevere of Gwent long before coming to Camelot, along with the rumors of her fragility and frequent illnesses. One traveling merchant who had visited Amhrán when she’d been awaiting the arrival of Marke’s envoy had insisted that the lady of Gwent was a snow Nymph, pale as ice and as beautiful as a snowflake but cursed by an enchantress to whither at the touch of a mortal man.  
  
Isolde had thought the story unlikely at the time and now that Arthur’s queen was standing before her she remembered it again, unable to help a snort at its ridiculousness. Guinevere _was_ pale, but hardly like snow. There was a scattering of freckles across her nose from where the sun had kissed her complexion and far from looking about to whither her whole countenance brimmed with the bloom of life. She strode into the room with purpose better suited to a knight than a queen, waving away her attendants with an impatient flick of her wrist until she was standing in front of Isolde, staring down at her with the intensity of a crow. She was tall for a woman. Isolde, who had never been on the short end herself, found she had to tilt her head up to meet the other woman’s eyes.  
  
“That was quite an impressive tale you spun for my husband in the throne room,” Guinevere finally said. The deepness of the Queen’s voice took Isolde by surprise. She had half expected the sound of bells from all the stories, but even here Guinevere proved them ridiculous. Far from being angelic and bell like, her voice had nearly the depth of a boy’s, an underlining layer of velvet that made Isolde imagine she’d make quite the seductress. Indeed there was a mischievous glint in Guinevere’s blue eyes as the Queen circled her, tilting her noble nose upward as she fanned herself. “Sir Lancelot is ready to offer you refuge at Joyous Garde while he rides to defend your honor.”  
  
Isolde felt a spark of hope but she kept it secret within herself, nodding demurely as she replied, “that is kind of Sir Lancelot.”  
  
Guinevere’s gaze sharpened on her as she laughed, not at all kindly.  
  
“Aye, a story for the ages. My husbands most trusted friend and champion coming to the aide of such a beautiful young maiden. Risking his honor and my husband’s disfavor for the sake of a spoiled little girl who thinks she knows love. You know not the half of it!”  
  
“Your Grace?” Isolde did not know what to make of the Queen’s words but she felt the threat of them slide cool down her spine.  
  
“You told my husband a falsehood. You betrayed your husband and took a lover.” Guinevere stated with such abruptness of tone it Isolde took an involuntary step back but she refused to cower. She met the woman glare for glare. She did not care what Guinevere thought of her. She could not let it matter! She would save Tristan’s life with whatever means she had to.  
  
“Nay your Grace,” she denied raising her chin defiantly. She would not be intimidated. She was every bit the queen that Guinevere was.  
  
The Queen scoffed with a flick of her fan, hitting Isolde on the shoulder with it seemingly by accident and the fair woman bristled.  
  
“Come dear, it’s just us women. Sir Marke’s nephew is reputed to be quite handsome. The voyage from your homeland was long, your husband is old. I would have sipped from that cup myself. Perhaps someday I will. Arthur will not be young forever and there are many wars to be fought that take him from my side.”  
  
Oh of all the nerve!  
  
Isolde all but snarled at the impetuous woman, the wildness she had buried within her the day she’d left her homeland surging to the surface as she imagined Arthur’s strange and beautiful queen calling Tristan to her bed. If ever she had wondered whether the love she bore for Tristan was genuine those doubts would have been laid to rest. The very thought of him with another woman was nearly enough to release the beast. Arthur’s queen did not know the dangerous game she played.  
  
At the sound of her growl Guinevere’s lips curled into a triumphant grin and Isolde swore she thought she saw something feral gleam in her eyes. She suspected more and more that she was being stalked, herded into a corner like prey. Was she too one of the were kin? It was impossible to tell. She had to be more careful, Guinevere was obviously far more than she appeared on the surface. She was beginning to fear the other woman might be a far better player at this game than she was.  
  
Isolde forced herself to calm, for she would never forgive herself if she faltered now and Tristan paid the price. With will that would have made her mother proud she replied through her gritted teeth, “The age of my husband and the length of the voyage has no bearing on the strength of my word. I swear on my father’s grave, I have taken no lover.”  
  
“So you said in the throne room.” Guinevere quipped, unimpressed. “But from what I have heard Anguish was a brute of a man and the world is best rid of him.”  
  
“He was my father!” Isolde found herself snapping in reply.  
  
“Something to which I do not hold you at fault princess Isolde I assure you,” the Queen all but sneered. “Forgive me, but I refuse to believe that the man who beat your mother and would have let his kingdom starve around him for his pride has any great hold on your tender heart.”  
  
Isolde trembled.  
  
“How did you know that?!” She hissed at the brunette, shame and fury twisting up inside of her as the Queen’s words drudged up the memory of the long days of siege when Arthur’s men had surrounded their keep. They’d been holed in, their resources depleted, starving to death but father would budge for nothing. It had been her mother to open the gate in the middle of the night and raise the white flag.  
  
When her father had woken and learned what she had done… Isolde bit back the sting of tears, refusing to spill them in front of this woman who so hated her, who looked down on her without so much as an ounce of pity.  
  
“Many stories came back from that campaign” Guinevere offered as explanation and Isolde glared at her.  
  
“Only Arthur and but two of his men bore witness! He swore his companions to secrecy. He promised that no one would know of my mother’s shame. ” It should not hurt so badly to learn that he had lied; she was a fool to have trusted him in the first place.  
  
Guinevere at least had the grace to look guilty for a moment, something like pity flashing in her eyes and now that it was finally there Isolde found she detested it.  
  
“Knights carry tales, especially when they are in their cups. I am sorry if I brought back ill memories.”  
  
“Sorry?” Isolde knew it was unwise but she could not seem to stop the fury of her tongue. “Forgive me, but I do not believe you are. You think me a liar. So be it. Cease torturing me and be done with it. Burn me at the stake for an adulteress but do not pretend that you are sorry.”  
  
Guinevere did not reply right away. There was something different in her eyes now, a kind of concern that reminded Isolde strongly of her lady mother. It made her more discomforted than the woman’s censure had managed to.  
  
“Whether you believe it true or not I only seek the truth. I must know that before….” She seemed to catch herself mid thought and shook her head slightly. “You swore on your father’s gave, but would you swear the same by trial of fire? Think carefully. It will know when you lie and the wizard’s flame will consume you. I have seen it done.”  
  
For a moment every last one of Isolde’s hopes came crashing around her like so many heavy stones. She would not pass trial by wizard’s fire, for she was guilty indeed of loving another. If Guinevere ordered it done she would surely be found out. She would not care so much to be guilty and to die for that guilt except that it would mean also that Tristan would die. It was a thought she could not bear, so she must not give up. Not for anything.  
  
She battled back the fear and forced herself to think clearly, wringing her hands as she desperately sought some way out of this new turn. There had to be a way to save them both… and then it came to her.  
  
“Aye.” Guinevere blinked at her in surprise and Isolde stood straighter, confidence she did not quite feel brimming in every word. “I would swear before the fire that I have had no man but my husband and the peddler that carried me here between my legs.”  
  
Any number of the women Isolde knew from court would have curled their lips in disdain at the shocking statement, and indeed Guinevere’s mouth fell open in an almost unattractive O as confusion clouded her eyes. But far from cringe, after a long moment of thought the woman let out a startled bark of laughter.  
  
“Only your husband and the peddler?” Guinevere asked and Isolde hesitantly nodded, startling when the Queen broke into full bullied hysterics that she had no idea how to interpret.  
  
Dread began to creep up inside of her as the Queen continued to laugh. Somehow Guinevere had guessed her secret. Fear bolted through her, but then the Queen reached for her shoulder, placing a firm but comforting hand atop it as she said, “Now that I do believe.”  
  
“Your Grace?” Isolde hardly dared to hope.  
  
“You’re a clever girl Isolde, and brave to risk so much,” The Queen replied, all trace of mockery gone, the frank sincerity in her blue eyes almost more unsettling than her concern. “I abhor liars and the dull witted above all else… but even I must admit there might be some things worth any risk.”  
  
~*~  
  
When Gwyn exited lady Isolde’s quarters he was unsurprised to find Sir Lancelot waiting for him, or to find that he had sent the guard who had been set at the Irish princess’s door away. He scowled at the dark haired knight, feeling somewhat like a child being scolded when Lancelot folded his arms and cocked a brow at him.  
  
“You heard about the beating of the Queen of Ireland from a drunken knight? I’ve never known you to be much for spirits Gwyn. Why didn’t you tell her that you were with Arthur and I that day?”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Gwyn marched passed him with his nose in the air and a dramatic swish of his skirts. “I was in bed, sick with fear for my poor husband. A queen does not go into battle.”  
  
“Some queens can’t be kept from battle and some of them even go out of their way to interrogate prisoners.”  
  
“Well I had to be sure. Merlin has suggested a trial by fire, which would mean not a whit to me if some fools I know weren’t planning on going against the King’s will and whisking prisoners off to their castles like God’s personal champion!”  
  
“And will she pass the fire?” Lancelot asked, ignoring Gwyn’s anger which he knew of course would only make him angrier.  
  
“Aye, so you need not play the hero.” Gwyn enjoyed Lancelot’s expression of shock a little too much as he strolled down the passage, content to let Lancelot attempt to keep up with him. He was furious with him still, for risking so much on a stranger. “She’ll pass, but not because she’s innocent.”  
  
“But how can that be? Merlin’s fire always knows when lies are told.”  
  
“And no lies will be told. When you bring her to Joyous Garde make sure you bring that peasant who helped carry her through the bog with you. I suspect he’ll appreciate it.”  
  
“I should think so,” Lancelot agreed. “Arthur only locked him up for aiding a potential criminal. Why bring him to Joyous Garde though? Why not simply set him free?”  
  
“It’s too late for that old fool I’m afraid. I don’t think he’d leave his lady.” Lancelot frowned for a moment, but seemed to accept this, nodding along like the loyalty of a peasant to a noble lady even at the expense of his own life was something of the everyday. Despite himself, the sight made some of Gwyn’s anger cool. Lancelot was not called ‘the just’ for nothing. He was uniquely good in a way that always left Gwyn in wonder.  
  
“You on the other hand should have left her to her fate. Would you really have risked everything you’ve fought so hard for, for a stranger whose innocence you did not believe in?”  
  
“Aye.”  
  
“By the virgin Lancelot, why!” Gwyn whirled on him furiously, pushing him with both hands until he’d backed himself into the wall. “You would break Arthur’s trust for two addled lovers who mean nothing to you? Even you can’t be such a merciful fool.”  
  
“Because you were at the siege of Ireland and you know well as I do that her life has hardly been easy. What chance at happiness has she had?”  
  
“You and your damned happiness Lancelot. She could have learned to be happy with her husband. Marke is not such an orge.”  
  
“He would burn a girl at the stake for love.”  
  
“What is love when she had a duty?”  
  
“It should not be a crime to love.”  
  
Perhaps it should not. It never seemed so in the bard’s tales, but this was no fairy tale to be spun from a mothers lips into a child’s ear. Well Gwyn knew that, better than most, and Isolde should have known it too. He knew he and Lancelot were standing too close, close enough to breathe the same air, and to feel the heat of each others bodies. Just an inch or two more and a tilt of the head just slightly up and Gwyn would know what it was to taste the other man’s lips.  
  
What he wouldn’t have given.  
  
“It is when you’re a Queen and love any but the King,” he heard himself whisper.  
  
“Gwyn,” Lancelot’s voice had gone deeper and a shiver went down Gwyn’s spine. He dragged his eyes from the soft folds of the other man’s lips to stare into honeyed brown eyes. “If it were you… ”  
  
The words were what Gwyn needed to finally pull himself away. He could not stand the way Lancelot looked as if he were being torn in two, abandoned to some cruel fate just by the act of Gwyn’s departure. He hated even more that he felt the same.  
  
“It shall never be me,” he promised as he swept away with his iciest glare. And if there was anything at all within himself that doubted it Gwyn took comfort from the fact that at least no one looking would be able to tell. _  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
 _Earlier that morning_  
  
Jeff was cursing Chandler as he scrambled to dress, hair still wet and body damp from a hurried shower. A glance outside the dormitory window at the empty yard confirmed that the others had already left for the main house and Jeff cursed again, resigning himself to the scolding he was in for. Headmaster Strand would be furious and Wes would be disappointed and Wes already had enough reason to be disappointed in him.  
  
“Jeff!” He heard a familiar voice call through the window and he groaned, hopping on one foot as he made his way back to the window and attempted to yank on his sandals at the same time.  
  
“Calvin get back to your dorm!” Jeff shouted once he’d poked his head out the window and confirmed that Calvin was indeed standing in the yard below. Catching sight of the dirtied baseball uniform the boy wore, evidence that he had yet again snuck into town, Jeff scowled. “And don’t think I’m going to cover for you either. You’re going to get yourself killed on of these-“  
  
“Nick says they’re going to attack tonight!”  
  
The words seemed to slam into Jeff and the teenager stood upright, muscles stiffening even as his heart leapt in alarm.  
  
“What?” He snapped, almost without thought and Calvin shouted back anxiously.  
  
“Sebastian wants to kill Lina and Nick said-  
  
“Shhh.” Jeff snapped out of his stupor and shushed the boy to silence. “Keep your voice down!” He hissed down at Calvin who opened his mouth to reply but fell short when Jeff violently motioned for him to zip his lips. “Stay there, I’m coming down.”  
  
He abandoned any effort to appear presentable after that, all thought he had now focused on what Calvin had revealed to him. His mind raced with questions Sebastian wanted Lina dead? Why, and how could he stop them without the situation combusting? He was walking a fine line, trying to keep the pack safe, Nick safe and not let anyone find out the extent to which they’d bonded and what it allowed Nick to do. If Wes found out he’d murder him, and then he’d tell Blaine and nothing good would come of that. He was throwing open the front doors a moment later and Calvin practically knocked him over in his haste to get to him, his sweat covered body trembling with anxiousness as he gripped Jeff’s arms.  
  
“This guy tried to kill Sebastian and N-Nick said to warn you that they’re going to try to kill Lina because she’s a Medici. Does he mean like the Hunters? Lina can’t be a Hunter she’s one of us. You’ve got to get Blaine to tell them they’ve got it wrong-”  
  
“Calvin! Listen to me.” Jeff snapped and Calvin fell silent. “I’ll handle it. I want you to go back to the school. Don’t tell anyone where you’ve been.”  
  
“But-”  
  
“Do you want to get sent back home?! Because that’s what will happen if you tell anyone that you snuck out again. You remember what Blaine said, he can’t protect you if you don’t follow the rules and how do you think he’s going to feel when he learns you’ve been telling Sebastian things about us?”  
  
He knew the words were cruel, they certainly felt cruel as he said them, as he watched Calvin flinch away from him in horror, shame and desperation twisting his face.  
  
“I didn’t… I mean… I never told him anything important.”  
  
“You’re twelve. How the hell do you know what’s important? That’s why you should have just stayed away like I told you to.”  
  
“Like you!” Calvin accused, fear turning to bitterness as he stomped a foot on the ground. “Wes told you to stay away from Nick but you didn’t! Isn’t it important for Blaine to know that your _mate_ is going to attack us?”  
  
Jeff cringed.  
  
“He’s _not_ my mate okay! He’s just some stray I fucked once. Just because you have sex with someone doesn’t mean it’s love. Blaine’s old enough to know that even if you aren’t. You wanna risk getting thrown out be my guest, but if I were you I wouldn’t say anything.”  
  
He felt awful saying those things, Jeff didn’t want to hurt Calvin, but he needed to be sure the boy wouldn’t go running off to tell Blaine anything before he could get a handle on the situation. He felt like he was walking the plank, trying to keep the pack safe from Nick and Sebastian’s schemes, trying to keep Nick safe by covering for him when he could. If it came down to war he knew where he stood and he knew where Nick stood. And none of it would end well. The other alpha had been so so wrong. It _did_ end in their blood.  
  
He wouldn’t let that happen. He had to think. There had to be a way out for them both and he’d find it, even if it meant doing things he wasn’t proud of.  
  
His parents would have been ashamed of him. _He_ was ashamed of himself. This was his home, these people his family. He was going to be a guard someday, like he’d always wanted to be, and he took the calling seriously… and yet, he couldn’t bring himself to watch Nick get hurt. He knew why, no matter what he said to Calvin.  
  
“Will Blaine really be that mad?” Calvin’s voice wobbled as he asked. “D-did I really say something that’s gonna get Lina killed? I d-didn’t mean to.” Jeff couldn’t stand the feeling of the younger boy’s distress battering at his senses. He couldn’t be that much of an asshole, no matter how much he needed to be. He shook the kid’s arm to get his attention and awkwardly patted his shoulder.  
  
“Look, I know you didn’t. I’ll handle it okay? I’m not going to let anything happen to Lina or the pack no matter what and I won’t let Blaine kick you out either. You’re just a kid, you didn’t know any better.”  
  
“You’re a kid too,” Calvin mumbled tearfully and Jeff bristled. “You’re only a protégé. How are you gonna stop a war all by yourself?”  
  
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just know I have to. I’ll figure it out.”  
  
Jeff’s words were brave but in truth he had no idea whether or not he could live up to them. The situation was fast slipping out of his control. It had probably never been in his control in the first place because Calvin was right. He was just a teenage protégé and he had no clue how to begin stopping a war between Sebastian and Blaine. That had been inevitable from the start. The truth was this was he was scared and in far too over his head.  
  
“We don’t heel,” Calvin said and Jeff blinked down at him in surprise. The red haired preteen had wiped the tears from his eyes and stiffened his spine. Nodding sternly he reached out one hand to tap Jeff on the chest in such a startlingly accurate impression of Nick that Jeff started to smile. “Wolves don’t heel and we won’t be preyed upon.”  
  
Jeff felt even worse about the things he’d said now, as Calvin’s courage bolstered him. He’d make it up to him some day.  
  
“No,” he agreed. “We won’t.”  
  
If there was a way to save them both he’d find it, Jeff decided. No matter what he had to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who might be wondering there will be more sexy times here on out, but unfortunately Blaine and Kurt aren’t going to be able to spend all week in bed like they might like. They can’t keep the world at bay forever, sadly, and it looks like Sebastian’s getting ready to spark this war all on his own without any help from M (James?). Unless Jeff can stop him. But Jeff is just some teenage protégé. Or not. We know Arthur and the circle are returning to give this whole thing one more shot. Anyone spotted a few familiar faces? The past is starting to seep to the surface but is Nick right? Is history doomed to repeat itself?


	26. 24: The Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the match is lit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> INDIVIDUAL CHAPTER WARNING:bp!Kurt. Santana makes a reference to past NON-CON involving minors, it's not very explicit but it does paint a grim picture of past experiences. On that note, after some thought I feel I should clarify that Santana herself has not experienced these things. More of Santana's story will be revealed as the series progresses, but she like many other lycans the world over not growing up in a safe zone has has seen some horrible things. Seeing them at such a young age has had its effect on her. She has a journey to make throughout the larger story and I hope despite its darker tone you can enjoy that journey, but I want you to be safe so please do mind the warnings.
> 
> Also, because I've had a lot of fun imagining him the Rajeesh introduced here is the one and only Rajeesh. :P The one that Kurt's character replaced. Why? Because this is a big world that requires a lot of characters and I wanted it to feel real. I want Westerville to look how America looks (or should look) this big salad bowl where people of all races and creeds have gathered for safety and have become pack despite their differences. Since little about Glee's Rajeesh is known other than his name and his possible romance with Mercedes, I'm taking a ton of artistic liberty but hopefully you'll enjoy him as I do. And my hope with all au's is that the characters fit their setting but something of Glee remains, and I wanted it to be no different with Raj, which is difficult to do when all you have is a name and the fact that he's Indian. So I made him a med student of sorts, because he would have been. Like Mike's father wanted him to be a doctor *eye roll* without further ado, chapter twenty four. Thank you guys for your continued support. You are amazing.

  
-~-~-  
Helpful terms  
  
Nulo/Nasa: _Romanian origin_. A secondary parent and guide. Cubs may spend as much (if not more) of their youth with their secondary parent(s) whose task it is to shape them for a designated role within the pack. Typically these are elder wolves and often related to the cub by blood. This arrangement allows the parents of cubs, who are the most physically fit, to see to the daily needs of the pack and for elders to leave their knowledge with the young. _Note: In some cultures this practice has largely been replaced by appointment of a single Alpha-Master, who is typically not related to their protégé and younger._  
  
Vryloka: _Greek origin_. Mythical creatures who drank blood and displayed other supernatural abilities (like shifting). Their histories have become tangled with the Turkish _Vampir_ and confusion remains on the exact origin and abilities of vampires as a result (vampires who shift into bats?).  
  
Mio Caro: My darling (boy) _Italian_.  
  
-~-~-

The Refectory was unusually busy for that time of morning, just after ten and not quite into the swing of lunch hour. But that might have something to do with the couple sitting off to the back and away from the brightness of the windows. Neither of them was in the habit of traveling alone, despite other appearances.  
  
He wore an expensive looking suit and sunglasses, his pale hair pulled into a sleek pony tail behind his head. The woman with him had her eyes similarly covered and the expensive green silks that draped over her form complemented the deep auburn of her hair so skillfully it could only have been practiced. They had entered alone and unannounced so there was nothing to distinguish them from any other wealthy patron out to an early lunch and yet there was an unmistakable aura of power surrounding them that had the entire restaurant on edge. The staff scuttled and bustled to make sure their every need was met but otherwise gave them a wide berth.  
  
“He’s late,” Sorsha Motisi commented as she pursed blood red lips and glanced at the far wall. She did not like to be kept waiting. She liked it even less that such an unoriginal intimidation tactic had such ability to annoy her.  
  
“James has a flair for the dramatic,” the man sitting opposite her replied on a murmur. “But he is not to be underestimated. My father fears him.”  
  
Sorsha considered Aurel, staring into the cool black plastic of the sunglasses he wore, imagining the pale green of his irises dilated with fury. Aurel’s temper was almost as legendary as his father’s cruelty.  
  
“Is it James, or is it the unknown that he fears?” Sorsha asked, her voice whisper soft in the din of voices surrounding them. “Balaur’s memory is too long. His fears are grounded in old wives tales.”  
  
“You doubt my father?” Aurel’s mouth tightened around the words, and Sorsha smirked. “Men have died for less.”  
  
“And men have died for your father, Aurel. Too many of the Family have died for his failures, “She reminded him and the blond vampire’s fingers tightened on the stem of the wine glass he held. “We begin to think he can’t hold up his end of the bargain.”  
  
“Did the Family think it was going to be easy to achieve our aims? The line of Arthur is all but dead, the crown within our grasp. Could the house of Motisi have done better?”  
  
Sorsha slowly grinned, her fanged teeth glinting behind her lips as she purred, “Perhaps. We’ve not been allowed to try. We may get our chance, should the house of Balaur fail the Family once again.”  
  
“Then I suppose we’ll never know.” Aurel waved offhandedly. “For this time we won’t fail.”  
  
Sorsha did not reply, for at that very moment a tall figure clad in blue jeans and a dusty looking leather jacket came strolling toward their table. Despite the fact that Sorsha and Aurel were waiting on him the man’s pace was languid as he loped toward them, swinging a cheap pair of black shades around his index finger as he hummed under his breath. Sorsha was off putt by the changes in him. He hardly looked like a vampire anymore. He didn’t even need to shield his eyes from the sun. With his dark hair so windswept and his cheeks ruddy with sun and the bloom of life he could have been cut from a GQ spread themed Rebel Without A Cause.  
  
He was grinning beatifically as he slid into the open seat between them and his blue eyes could only be described as twinkling as he greeted them with an indolent wave.  
  
“Aurel,” he nodded at the older vampire, ignoring the air of frost coming from him. He turned and offered up his hand as he greeted her. “Signora Motisi.”  
  
“Signore Dean,” she murmured in response, extending her hand and allowing him to bestow a kiss on the ring she wore. It was a simple silver serpent coiled around her finger with two brilliant sapphires for eyes. Unlike Aurel she was the soul of politeness, knowing better than to allow any hint of her annoyance with James to show. That sort of knowledge was power. “Were the roads crowded?” She asked instead with a teasing lift of an eyebrow and the corner of the dark haired vampire’s mouth tilted upward.  
  
“I took the back roads. I had some business in Westerville this morning that kept me.”  
  
“It wouldn’t have anything to do with that woman you were seeing would it?” Aurel asked, stirring the pasta on his plate as if he intended to eat it. That alone would have been humorous. But the way that James’ eyes dilated at mention of the woman was downright titillating. Aurel grinned, for he was a shark if nothing else and there was clearly blood in the water. “Medici wasn’t it?”  
  
“Benito Medici’s daughter?” Sorsha cooed, as if the information was news to her. “How scandalous. How on earth did you manage it? Rumor has it he has the poor girl under lock and key. They say she’s cloistered in a convent somewhere.”  
  
But that wasn’t true, and everyone at the table knew it. The Medici family was too influential in Rome, the power seat of the Motisi coven (not to mention their crime syndicate) for the two not to keep careful tabs on each other. But her house had not risen to power by being stupid and playing into Hunters hands. They took careful pains to leave no evidence of their vampire heritage, and to operate their crime ring without police intervention. What they could not keep secret with bribery or good old fashioned violence a glamor always took care of.  
  
Still rumors about them abounded, and Medici had never been a fool. He knew them for what they truly were and he’d gladly destroy them all for the demons the pope declared them, but the burden of proof was heavy on him. With the amount of money the Motisi’s poured into the government they’d be very angry indeed if the family was slaughtered without undeniable proof.  
  
Benito Medici senior expended his sons like they were tin soldiers, easily replaced when they were ground into the dust but his daughter was the jewel. A man’s enemies took notice when he buried his treasure far from himself where it would be easier for them to reach. Since her disappearance the Family had been keeping its ears and eyes open, waiting for any word of her to spring up. No one knew where Lina Medici had been secreted off to for sure but Sorsha doubted it was a convent. Not with such delicious rumors abounding.  
  
“Daddy’s little princess fell for the bad boy did she?” Aurel asked and Sorsha chuckled at the way James’ shoulders tightened, giving him away louder than a snarl might have. So it was true then.  
  
“I bet daddy didn’t like that,” Aurel voiced both their thoughts.  
  
“Oh do tell us James,” Sorsha purred when the dark haired vampire remained silent on the subject. “Do you have her holed away somewhere? It’s so awfully romantic. Though I’d hardly have taken you for such a swain.”  
  
“What can I say?” When James finally answered it was with a deceptively careless shrug. “I like a pretty companion as much as the next guy. She was fun, and when she stopped being fun we went our separate ways.”  
  
“And now you pine for her.” Sorsha clucked her tongue piteously. “No, mio caro, do not deny it. You’ve been so distracted. We did notice. You had to know the Family would be watching didn’t you caro?” Sorsha took a delicate bite of the fish on her fork. Swallowing before she dabbed the corners of her mouth with the napkin in her lap. “She must have been quite something, to hold the attention of The Master for so long. It must burn to know that she belongs to another now.”  
  
“Another?” Aurel asked, the merriment he felt at goading James slipping away as he realized that Sorsha knew something he did not. Her lips turned up gleefully.  
  
“Oh mio caro, don’t you know that if you wish to keep something secret it’s best to keep it to yourself?” She shook her head at James, enjoying his obvious discomfort. “When it became obvious that you were looking for someone, and that you were using those stray dogs of yours to do it, the Family thought it best to do a bit of searching of our own. After all it’s curious isn’t it? That a man of your repute would take such a keen interest in a she-bitch.”  
  
James growled low at that, the sound rumbling in his chest violently, as terrifying as any lycan’s and Sorsha blinked in surprise. How peculiar.  
  
“Touched a nerve did she?” Aurel asked, realization dawning over his features. “Well well well, Medici’s daughter made it all the way over here did she? How interesting.”  
  
“She’s not part of this.” James immediately warned and Sorsha laughed.  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous James. Of course she’s part of it.” She was a Medici, a weapon to use against her father and she always would be. Clearly she was also something to use against James. Sorsha just had to figure out why.  
  
“What’s it to you anyway? If she’s with Anderson it means she’s one of them now.” Aurel’s face twisted up in disgust, his nose wrinkling like he’d smelled something foul but Sorsha watched James carefully. “Mutt blood is poison. I don’t care how strong you think you are James, you can’t feed off one of the dogs.”  
  
“Is it because you love her?” Sorsha asked, though James did not strike her as capable of the emotion. Nevertheless there was _something_ tying him to the woman. “How very sad for you caro, since she has had a child with him.” Ah, there was such rage behind James eyes now. He had known about the boy, and he was not pleased. “Rather clever of her when you think about it. Their kind is ever so stupid about their progeny. Even if Anderson discovers who she is now he can’t be rid of her. Not with the child in the picture.”  
  
Medici’s daughter had been a clever little thing indeed. Sorsha almost could have liked her for it.  
  
Aurel’s eyes had widened at the reveal, his pale nearly invisible brows arching over the rim of his glasses, his lip curling in a nasty snarl.  
  
“Enterprising little bitch,” he sneered with a snap of his teeth. James moved so quickly even Sorsha did not see it coming. It was very exciting, as she’d never had occasion to see the master vampire in action before. Aurel had been right, there was something different about James, a savagery to him that was out of place in a vampire. In less than a blink he had a grip on Aurel’s throat and was leaning close to whisper in his ear.  
  
“We’re done talking about Lina. She is of no consequence to the Family and therefore of no consequence to you. You got it Aurel?” Though the words were hissed in Aurel’s ear, thanks to her superior hearing Sorsha heard every word. The threat in James’ voice sent a chill down her spine. When James released him Aurel gasped for breath. Sorsha hummed in displeasure.  
  
“You do understand our worry James?” She asked. “You promised Balaur you could end Arthur’s line and yet we find that you knew of Blaine’s heir and have had ample time to be rid of the whelp and have not done so.”  
  
“We are running out of time!” Aurel growled through his bruised throat. “You have seen the signs. You know as well as I do that the old souls stir, and yet you let him take a mate! What have you been doing this entire time?!”  
  
Sorsha watched as James rolled his bright blue eyes, grabbing a knife from next to his plate and thrusting it into Aurel’s hands.  
  
“If you think you can do it without me, by all means slit my throat.” James waited but Aurel just stared at him. “No? That’s right, because you know you can’t. You don’t have a chance in hell of finding the crown on your own or stopping the curse that would fall upon you if you were to wipe Blaine and the kid out. You couldn’t even use the crown once you had it. Merlin made it nearly impossible for anyone but Arthur to wear it.”  
  
“And yet you are so certain that you can,” Sorsha quipped and James blue eyes turned to her.  
  
“You know what I am. I have the wizard you need, I have the strongest blood out of all of us and I am the only one of my kind left in the world. Since I’m obviously your best hope at getting that damn crown, do not piss me off. We’re doing this my way.”  
  
“Your way is taking too long.” She replied bluntly. “The world is changing. The wizards have betrayed us as we always knew they would. Every day the humans here get closer to passing a law that will expose us and it won’t be long until other countries adopt similar policies. What will happen to our way of life then?”  
  
“Ironic isn’t it, the wizards took control for the ‘good of all’ and now they stand to be the only ones safe from human slaughter,” Aurel scoffed.  
  
“If the wizard’s side with the humans it will mean the end of us,” Sorsha reminded them both gravely. “They will draw us out and force us to submit to their regime or hide like rats in the sewers. It cannot be caro. The Family will not be subject to the mercy of common men when we should be their masters. You promised us the crown and thus far you have failed. You expect us to place faith now in myths?”  
  
“The vryloka are not myth, just otherwise extinct apart from me. Let us not forget who killed the man with the power you want so badly.”  
  
“Maybe so,” she allowed. “Nevertheless the rest of us have lived on and the vryloka are as you say, extinct.”  
  
“Nearly,” James rebutted.  
  
“Nearly,” Sorsha agreed, smiling slow and wide to reveal her fangs. “I don’t care about the girl James. I don’t care about using her to get at Medici. I don’t care about anything like I care about the fact that even now Blaine may be spawning another whelp. If you care about her you’ll forget her too and focus on what you came to do. Do we understand each other?”  
  
“It’s already being taken care of. Everything is in place and going to plan.”  
  
“Good.” Her smile thinned into a threatening snarl. “Finish it, James, or we will.”  
  
~*~*~  
  
The third time Kurt woke that morning he was already rubbing himself off. He and Blaine had fallen into an exhausted sleep after another rigorous round of love making, but Kurt’s heat raged on like a storm, blowing through him fiercely and then going deceptively quiet as it left him weakened and desperate for whatever bit of rest he could manage between bouts. It would not let him sleep for long. He was burdened with an appetite for sex so strong it ignored even the exhaustion of his body. He had Blaine’s thigh squeezed between his, his movements moving from languid to more urgent as he lost the rhythm of sleep. His skin was hot and sticky with sweat but he groaned low and pressed himself flush against Blaine anyway.  
  
Kurt loved the way Blaine felt against him. He smiled at the way Blaine’s body answered his even in sleep. Blaine wasn’t under far. Kurt could feel the impression of Blaine’s consciousness alongside his like a shadow. It might have unnerved him any other time but as it was, Blaine felt too good, and Kurt wanted him too much to be uneasy about having him so close. Blaine could never be close enough.  
  
He let his fingers brush over Blaine’s collarbone, then over his shoulder and down his arm as he rolled his hips, marveling at the way his body sparked and he could feel Blaine’s spark in response. Not just the telltale hardening of his cock, but all the places that lit up in the alpha’s mind as it shifted towards wakefulness. It was so incredible. Suddenly Kurt wanted to know what it would feel like to have Blaine in his mouth, to feel Blaine fall to pieces all around him and feel it through him.  
  
He released Blaine’s thigh from where it was trapped between his legs and nudged Blaine gently onto his back, shushing him with soothing sounds as he startled awake. The wolf was close and moving him while he was asleep would have been dangerous if not for the soothing presence of Kurt’s mind so close to his. Kurt could feel the way Blaine’s consciousness responded to his own, recognizing him instantly and brushing warmly against his. It was a strangely physical sensation, reminding him sharply for a moment of when Blaine had been his dog and communicated affection with the rub of his head.  
  
Though Kurt wanted nothing more than to crawl down the bed and sink his mouth over Blaine’s cock without so much as a pause, he wanted to savor it with the new heightened intimacy between their minds more. So Kurt straddled him and planted a soft kiss on his mouth, lingering close to his lips as he watched Blaine come fully awake and blink the sleep from his eyes.  
  
“Kurt?” Blaine’s voice was sleep rough but Kurt could feel his anticipation twining hotly between them as he became fully cognizant of their position.  
  
"Blaine…" he whispered in reply with a small grin, and he lowered his mouth again, kissing Blaine languidly as though they had all the time in the world and Blaine’s lips against his didn’t make him want to go crazy. Blaine moaned into his mouth and sat up for a better angle and Kurt’s hands found purchase in his hair. As Kurt shifted forward Blaine strained up, their heavy breathing filling the air as the kiss grew hotter and hotter.  
  
They kissed until Kurt’s lips buzzed, until he could feel both of them wound up and ready to spring, until he felt like he’d lose his mind if he didn’t rock over Blaine’s flesh to get some friction. He felt the physical shiver of want go through Blaine as their lips parted just barely enough for their groans to escape between them, felt the way it seeped into the deepest parts of Blaine’s mind to become desire and he gloried in it. Blaine growled, chasing his lips when Kurt finally managed to drag his mouth away.  
  
"No, wait," he whispered, eyes closed as he clutched Blaine’s hair tighter and stilled his hips, legs gripping Blaine’s sides tightly. He could feel Blaine’s scalp beneath his nails, knew they had extend just a little too much not to sting and wondered at how much that turned him on. "I want to suck you." And _that_ , the way Blaine’s eyes dilated and everything within him lit up like flares as the wolf paced behind his eyes, that was so much better than Kurt could even have imagined because it didn’t just make him feel wanted. It made him feel inexplicably loved. He knew that his own eyes were full of determination and stark with hunger, and because Blaine was his now to read and discover at his leisure, he knew that Blaine loved it, loved every last little part of him.  
  
"I want to feel you come apart," he told Blaine. "And when you come down my throat, I want to hear you say my name." Kurt wanted Blaine to let go like he could nowhere else, to give Kurt everything he had and to feel as safe as Kurt always felt in his arms.  
  
"Fuck," Blaine cursed, shifting his hips underneath Kurt, trying to thrust up inside him but unable to get the right alignment. Kurt grinned down at him.  
  
"Then I want you to fuck me" he sighed softly, unable to do anything about the yearning that crept into his voice. He leant forward and kissed over Blaine’s jaw, nuzzling their cheeks together before nipping and biting his way down Blaine’s neck and finding his mark. It was slightly raised against his lips and several violent shades of purple and red from where he’d bitten earlier in the morning but the wound had stayed closed despite their athletic pursuits and it already looked lighter than it had before.  
  
Kurt loved it. He placed his mouth over it and sucked hard, making Blaine gasp and buck beneath him. Blaine’s physical response to stimulation of his mark had nothing on the mental one. It was like setting off fireworks between their minds and Kurt almost gave up on his plans and begged Blaine to fuck him right there. He pulled away before the sensation could overwhelm him and licked over the mark in some strange mix of praise and apology. "Please, Blaine, let me give you this.”  
  
Blaine shuddered, and Kurt felt his yes in every corner of his being. He climbed off Blaine’s lap and scooted back on the bed kneeling between his legs. He did not take time to study him, the heat in Kurt’s belly too insistent for that. There was only time to lean in, gripping the base of Blaine’s cock firmly, a quick moment of judgment and appreciation for its size and thickness, and then he licked a slow stripe up, up so very slowly, until he was at the head, tongue lapping at the precum that had gather there.  
  
Kurt could tell Blaine was fighting the urge to thrust forward as he looked up at him, and god, just the thought made him ache for it. With a soft whine he wrapped his lips around the head and _sucked_ , drawing a low moan out of Blaine’s lips. Kurt pulled off just long enough to spit into his hand, sans any other kind of lubricant, before sliding it up and down Blaine’s length, stroking him as he sucked.  
  
"Oh god," Blaine muttered and Kurt pulled off, placing an affectionate kiss right on the head. He liked Blaine’s cock he’d decided. He’d liked it the first two rounds but he was discovering he liked sucking it best of all. He smiled at it for a moment, just admiring, and it twitched under his watchful gaze as if demanding his attention. “Kurt, please…”  
  
He could definitely get used to hearing that hint of begging in Blaine’s voice. Kurt’s smile widened but he didn’t speak a reply. Instead he brought his lips back to the head, stroking it with kitten licks designed to drive Blaine crazy. Then he wrapped his lips around it and grabbed the base, slowly lowering his mouth, inch by slow inch. God Blaine tasted good. He was heavy on Kurt’s tongue, warm and salty, slightly bitter and something else that was just man and musk and flesh and Kurt’s belly just quivered with the desire for more.  
  
Blaine cried out, tipping his head back as Kurt lavished him and Kurt could feel that too, feel how tightly strung Blaine was with the heat and pressure of his mouth.  
  
"Fuck," Blaine hissed, struggling to hold his hips down as Kurt hallowed his cheeks, sucking long and hard like he didn’t even need to breathe, like all he needed in the world was this, and it _was_ but not like this. Not with Blaine holding back. He let Blaine’s cock fall from his mouth with a pop, panting softly for breath and pushing the alpha’s hips down when Blaine unconsciously bucked them and growled low in displeasure.  
  
"Blaine," he said, and a moment later he groaned because he could hear how rough his voice was, how low and desperate it sounded, and he could feel Blaine’s response to it and god he had never been turned on by the sound of his own voice before but he’s managing it now-or maybe Blaine’s the one turned on, and Blaine turned on turns him on. He can’t tell anymore, it’s all a circle. He reached for Blaine’s hand and pulled it toward him, setting it firmly atop his head. "Do it," he urged, eyes locked on his. "I want you to fuck my mouth."  
  
Kurt touched the tip with his lips and thrilled inside, because when Blaine snapped he felt it coming, felt both their wolves leap inside their chests.  
  
Blaine buried his fingers in Kurt’s hair pulled tightly, pushing inside with an almost violent growl, groaning at the depth. Kurt’s throat spasmed and fluttered around the violent intrusion and he jerked back instinctively, but Blaine held him in an iron grip as he pushed deeper and deeper with every thrust. He couldn’t breathe, it was raw and intense, and god did he love it. Though he was helpless to even draw a breath past Blaine’s cock he didn’t feel a single ounce of fear.  
  
Just when he thought it might be too much Blaine paused, because Kurt’s needs were his needs and he was as tuned to Kurt now as Kurt was to him. He pulled out just long enough to let Kurt catch a choking breath and then he was pushing back in. He fucked Kurt’s mouth with shallow thrusts sliding against his cheek as the beautiful friction it caused zinged through both their bodies, rebounding over the bond they shared.  
  
Then he pushed in slowly, deliberately, until he was buried as deep in the carven of Kurt’s mouth as he could go and he held him there.  
  
" _Yes,_ take it," he choked out in encouragement, "Fuck, your mouth, you’re so beautiful, Kurt," And then it was too much, and again Blaine seemed to know the instant that Kurt knew and the pressure on his skull released. Kurt jerked back and gasped for air. He knew he must look a mess, hair rucked up, dizzy from the lack of oxygen, lips bruised and wet with saliva, chest heaving with each gulp for air, and oh god so turned on he could whimper. He _was_ whimpering, that tight heavy heat in his abdomen was back with a vengeance and he couldn’t help reaching down to touch himself.  
  
He had barely begun to rub when Blaine grabbed his arm, his dominance wrapping around Kurt tighter than his physical hand and halting his movements. Kurt honest to god snapped his teeth at him with a growl of irritation and Blaine growled back, a warning. The wolf inside responded to the unspoken command and Kurt went still, ducking his head obediently.  
  
"You wanted this," Blaine remained him. “So take it. You’re going to come with my dick down your throat and then I’m going to fuck you until you come again and I’m going to fill up that gorgeous pussy of yours.”  
  
Kurt almost came from that alone; but then Blaine thrust back in and began a rough, terrible, wonderful pace, hitting the back of Kurt’s throat, building rhythm while everything in Kurt wound tighter, so incredibly tight. He shoved in again and held him there, as Kurt moaned around his length and shook, eyes stinging with tears. He felt like he was at the peak, ready to shatter in an instant.  
  
“Yes, oh god yes that’s it,” Blaine groaned, pulling out and thrusting back in again. “Come on Kurt, come for me. Come with my dick in your mouth.” And then the wave broke. Kurt came so suddenly it was painful, exquisitely so. Kurt moaned around Blaine’s cock as he rode out the orgasm, sucking all the harder and gripping Blaine’s hips as he fought the desperate need to breathe.  
  
When Blaine finally released his hair he pulled out with an obscene sound, leaving Kurt shuddering and gasping as the last waves of orgasm rippled through him. Blaine gave him no time to enjoy post coitous, making good on the promise from earlier to fuck him.  
  
Blaine’s chest rumbled with a deep growl, all patience lost as he grabbed Kurt by the shoulder and hip, pulling and shoving until he was laying on his stomach and Kurt couldn’t do anything but obey the command to stay when it came. He arched his back, gripping the sheets beneath his hands as he felt Blaine’s beautiful wet tongue tracing its way down his spine.  
  
"Say my name. Scream it," he murmured against Kurt’s back, his hot breath raising gooseflesh across the skin. Blaine’s nails stung as he slid his hands down to grip Kurt’s hips, raising him up on his knees and knocking his legs apart with an insistent nudge of his knee. Blaine traced the crease between his cheeks and Kurt gasped as a finger pressed against his hole, teasing and probing. His other hand snuck between Kurt’s bent knees and stroked his clit, setting up a delicious rhythm that had Kurt writhing against his hand.  
  
Then Blaine’s fingers were gone but Kurt wasn’t given any time to miss them. They were quickly replaced by his hot, wet, tongue, and Kurt bucked his hips forward with a curse. He received a sharp bite to the ass in punishment as a result and he jumped with a yelp. Blaine grabbed his hips and pulled him back roughly in an unspoken command to stay.  
  
“Shit,” he was trembling, struggling to support himself on his elbows, as Blaine greedily sucked and licked at his clit, every stroke of his tongue gorgeous torture. He wasn’t sure he could take much more without collapsing and Blaine felt it.  
  
 _“Say it. Say my name Kurt.”_ The command reverberated through his mind and Kurt couldn’t do anything but obey.  
  
“Blaine…” he gasped and Blaine squeezed his hips, slapping him smartly on the ass before he thrust a finger inside Kurt’s slick pussy.  
  
“ _You know what name I want to hear.”_ Two fingers now, thrusting in and twisting but not nearly enough. “ _Say it, Baby.”_  
  
“Alpha!”  
  
A low rumble was all the response Kurt received as Blaine’s whole mind lit up and he moved to cover Kurt with his body. The press of his hand between his shoulder blades pushed Kurt flat to the bed. Blaine stretched Kurt’s arms above his head, one after the other, palms down, and then he pressed himself against Kurt’s back, lying almost flush on top of him as one hand covered Kurt’s, entwining their fingers and the other guided his cock into position.  
  
Blaine pushed in without hesitance, giving Kurt only minimal time to adjust as he began to thrust. It was unbelievable how full Blaine could make him feel, almost all consuming. Kurt’s skin felt like it might burn wherever their skin touched and Blaine had him covered, caged by his body and forced to take every inch of his cock. Kurt couldn’t move, held tightly by the invisible binds of Blaine’s dominance, Blaine’s command for him to _stay_ blending in his head with his own cry for _more_ and plea of _please, Alpha, please_ as he shifted his hips up to drive Blaine deeper. “ _Harder_ ,” he pleaded. “ _Fuck me harder_.”  
  
Blaine complied, keeping his thrusts short and quick, but it wasn’t enough to quench the fire raging in Kurt. God he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe past how much he needed it. Right _there_ , he whimpered, the force of Blaine’s thrust pushed him forward on the bed. He drove himself against Kurt's body with such beautifully brutal precisian, hips slapping loudly against Kurt’s ass.  
  
“Oh… oh…”It was so deep Kurt felt it in his teeth, through his entire being. It made him shake, incapable of doing anything other than holding desperately tight to the sheets and try to remember how to breathe. He was sure he was going to wind so tight he’d snap in two. His blood was going to boil and he’d combust any moment now. So when Blaine slipped a hand down to rub roughly over his pussy Kurt nearly cracked his head on Blaine’s chin with his violent jerk.  
  
“Blaine!” His abused throat stung viciously as he shouted his lover’s name. Kurt swore he saw white as his brain all but sparked out like an exposed plug as he came, pulse after rippling pulse.  
  
“Oh, fuck, Kurt” Blaine came with a few sharp thrusts as Kurt’s walls fluttered and squeezed around him and he grasped Kurt’s pale hips like he was holding on for dear life and shuddered through his orgasm.  
  
Kurt collapsed on the bed, dragging Blaine with him and like all the other times, loath to see him pull away. This position was too uncomfortable to sleep in however so Blaine was forced to pull out this time, limbs shaking as exhaustion flooded over them both. Kurt just lay there, too sore and spent to even think about moving, just lying there gasping for air.  
  
“Kurt?” Blaine called a moment later when he could breathe. Kurt felt him shift beside him and struggle to hold himself up as he leaned over him. “Are you okay?”  
  
“m’fine” he responded with a stupid grin. He winced and fell silent, his throat burning with the effort it took to talk. Wordlessly Blaine rose from the bed. Kurt could practically hear the other man’s sore muscles protesting and wondered where on earth he was going and how he could possibly be moving again so soon. He had his answer a moment later when Blaine returned from the bathroom with a cup of water and a soft command for him to raise his head and drink.  
  
Kurt glowed at the show of concern, drinking obediently as Blaine tilted the glass to his lips and shuddering as the cool liquid soothed his raw throat.  
  
 _"Thank you,"_ he thought as Blaine set the glass aside. Blaine crawled back into bed, pulled him close and kissed him, and fuck, Kurt could still tastes himself on Blaine’s tongue. He hummed appreciatively as they shared warm lingering kisses, Blaine’s tongue tenderly stroking the inside of his mouth as if in apology. He spread kisses over Kurt’s jaw as the beta sighed tiredly and let his eyes drift closed, soothed by Blaine licking gently at his throat.  
  
“Love you,” Kurt murmured as he allowed himself to drift away. Blaine held him tight, his kisses easing Kurt into sleep.

~*~*~*~

Santana had never thought she’d see the day she missed Rachel Berry, of all people, but that day had come. She guessed it was just more proof that the world was ass backward and nothing could really be counted upon. She stomped her way down the stairs of the Berry’s duplex, her boots thudding dully as they hit the sidewalk. The dark haired lycan looked up, vaguely in the direction of home, and considered calling an end to her goodbyes but she could not bring herself to move.  
  
She’d woken up early that morning and gone to her abuelas room to warn her off bothering Brittany while she was gone. She had things to do that morning but the memory of abuela standing outside Brittany’s door, and the way abuela had looked when she’d been watching Brittany, wouldn’t leave her mind. Abuela’s hate for vampire kind was too strong, stronger even than her love for her home, her respect for her Alpha’s orders. Apparently stronger even than the love she bore for her granddaughter.  
  
Santana dug in the pocket of her jeans for the cigarettes and lighter she’d bought just for shitty days like today. She’d been hoping to talk to Rachel but her father Leroy hadn’t seen her recently either. No one had seen either her or Puck since the day before and they were gonna be in deep shit with Shelby when they finally turned up. Santana was pissed that Rachel had chosen today of all days to develop a rebellious streak. What the hell did it say about her that her biggest disappointment was that _Puck_ had gotten around to corrupting her first? Things were different now. There wouldn’t be time for that anymore.  
  
She took a deep breath in, assessing the stabbing pain in her chest for what it was (weakness) and burying it as quickly deep down where even _her_ inner critic wouldn’t find it. There had been some small part of her that had been hoping that Rachel would hear the goodbye for what it was, be her usual annoying self and demand to know what was going on. But that wasn’t going to happen. Rachel was with Puck now and she had to accept reality for what it was and get used to loneliness. She was going to be alone for a very long time.  
  
“Sooner or later everybody leaves you,” she muttered. The teenage boy with a face full of heinously unfortunate acne who was standing on the corner not far from her, pretending to be waiting on the bus, glanced at her for the third time, flushing when their eyes met. Santana scowled, bringing the cigarette she held between her fingers to her lips, lighting, and pulling in a deep drag. The smoke burned so deliciously in her throat she almost loathed to release it. But even the damn smoke was a lie. It tasted bitterly of toxins, promising the sweet oblivion of a cancerous death but she just wasn’t that lucky. Any damage the fumes caused her body would be erased by the finish of her next shift.  
  
The young and the spotted swallowed thickly as she blew out a stream of the bitter smoke.  
  
“Want some advice kid? Don’t get attached to anything,” she said and he startled at being addressed directly. He looked around as if he expected to find someone behind him and Santana rolled her eyes. “Are you hard of hearing, kid or just stupid?”  
  
“It’s Peter… and it’s just that, girls like you don’t usually talk to guys like me,” he murmured as his face flushed pink and it would almost be cute if he weren’t so painfully awkward about it and if Santana weren’t a gold star lady lover.  
  
“Yeah well I’m not a girl.” She replied bringing the cigarette back to her lips. She dreamed about being something soft and easily deconstructed, something like human, and took another deep drag. “The last time I remember feeling like a kid, I was seven. I was on a boat over from Puerto Rico.” Peter didn’t respond but that was okay, she hadn’t been looking for one, except, now that she didn’t have it of course she wanted one.  
  
“You know that some ships sneak people into the country right? People hate illegal immigrants, especially the hairy kind. But half the guys screaming the loudest about immigration and pest control are the same guys who will smuggle people into the country for money.” She scoffed. “I was on a ship once. A big old boat set to carry me to the US of A with my shiny paperwork in tow. The captain was one of those holy rollers, liked to tell me bible stories, but all of that meant jack shit when it was time to get his rocks off. You know he had a hull full of little girls stuffed where no one was going to come looking for them? That’s asshole heaven. And they took it, because it’s just a boat ride and then it’s over. Then you’re in the land of the free where nobody will hunt you or hold you down in the dark. ”  
  
The boy was staring at her, horrified down to his toes and Santana felt cruel. She had stopped trying to explain to everyone why she preferred feeling that way over anything else. They wouldn’t understand.  
  
“You like girls?” she asked and Peter slowly shook his head.  
  
“Not like that” he replied something strong in his voice for the first time and Santana blinked in surprise. Well she’d be damned. She barked a laugh and nodded approvingly at the kid.  
  
“Right. Well, Petey it’s been real.” Santana tossed her cigarette to the sidewalk, snuffing out the flame with the toe of her boot. She turned to stride up the street, her mind already focused on the difficulty of the road ahead. Peter called for her to wait. Santana had no idea why she did. She didn’t say anything, just turned to look at him and he gulped so loudly you didn’t have to be a wolf to hear it.  
  
“Are you gonna be okay?” He asked hesitantly, voice wavering like a bad radio. “Do you need me to call someone?” It was disgustingly sweet, this pint sized hero dead set on rescuing the damsel in distress because she just so happened to be cracking on the same street corner. Any other day she’d have torn him apart because firstly, what was a pimple faced teenager with tooth pick arms going to do to help her? And secondly, just because a girl got a little bent in the head every now and then didn’t mean she was fucking broken and needed some _man_ to pick up her pieces.  
  
But today was a different day. Today she was alone in a way she hadn’t been since that boat from Puerto Rico. She’d needed a hero then so badly she’d have gladly taken anyone, even Peter. But she’d learned the hard way that the only one she could truly depend on was herself. At least she’d thought she had.  
  
“I’m fine.” she assured them both. “Later, Peter.”  
  
But like everything else, that was a lie. Santana knew she was never going to see him again. She was never going to see any of them again.  
  
She was taking Brittany and they were going on the run, everything was all set up and Brittany was waiting for her back at the house. So why was she wasting time?  
  
She’d get Brittany to Westerville so she could save Hummel’s ass and when this mess was over Brittany would go back to her coven and Santana… well, she’d figure something out. She’d never really belonged here anyway. Her mother had met her mate when his pack had visited and just like that it was goodbye Columbus, hello Puerto Rico. Her childhood had been good but the land of her birth hadn’t been home since her parents had sent her to live with her nasa and nulo, because that was the tradition. It was just shit luck that they lived all the way in America. Despite the fact that she’d hated Ohio almost instantly she’d always loved her grandparents, they had been home for her; everything a good nasa and nulo should be.  
  
But everything was different now. Abuelo was dead, Abuela hater her, and after she ran off with a Vampire other wolves would hate her too. Maybe she’d catch a boat back to Puerto Rico, check out a new scene, or maybe she’d set no destination, see the world as she’d never seen it and go wherever she wanted. Either way, home was in the past and only a weakling held onto the past.  
  
Santana had never been weak. So then why was she stalling?  
  
*~*~*  
  
The infirmary had been quiet when Quinn arrived that morning, but it was far from quiet now. She’d been worried about returning to a mad house with the full moon so close and her being gone for the week. But she’d left her head assistant, Rajeesh, in charge and as ever he proved himself a highly capable assistant. It had been a nice surprise to return to an orderly work station and a relatively short list of appointments for the morning.  
  
Everything had been waiting for her right where it should have been when she’d dragged herself out of bed early that morning, including her coveted cup of espresso, and no matter how many times she’d declared he was a life saver the omega male had downplayed his role in the relative peace that she’d returned to.  
  
But then she’d gotten the notice from Wes that an omega apprentice had been attacked and was being brought to her and then Blaine was not responding to hails. By eight two people had died, a woman was in critical condition, a child had been brought to her coughing up blood and Stevie Evans was having a panic attack so severe he had required sedation.  
  
By eleven o’clock Quinn was ready to fall into an exhausted heap, but thankfully the list of patients yet to see was winding down to mostly students with stomach aches and broken bones, neither of which were uncommon in rambunctious cubs too young to have the control over their shifts that the adults had. Patients who merely required some coaxing in order to mend where they were broken? No sweat.  
  
The little girl who had been coughing up blood that morning was there for far more serious reasons and she was the last on Quinn’s list for the morning, everything else she felt confident that Raj and the younger assistants could handle while she met with Blaine. If Blaine could be dragged away from his mating bed long enough to have a discussion that was (a most likely futile effort if she was honest). But first there was this last patient and even after a morning filled with so much mourning this last patient seemed the hardest thing to deal with.  
  
Quinn had lost more than a few patients in her time as resident doctor to strange diseases that had no human precedent. It was hard and often heartbreaking work, pioneering the research of lycan bodies, and her patients were unfortunately rarely helpful to her efforts.  
  
Lycans had no real appreciation for modern medicine beyond the occasional over the counter drug. Even that Quinn had heard many of them grumble was a sign of weakness. The problem was that they did not want to associate themselves with humanity. They saw themselves as a higher form of wolf, and they did not trust human concoctions over natural remedies and the judgment of fate. They were far more likely to accept death before they would agree to medical treatment.  
  
Quinn knew by now that at least eighty percent of those she diagnosed with a serious illness would simply nod at her politely and decline any further visitations. They would go home to their families if they had them and go on until they simply couldn’t. When they felt it was time they would wander to meet their end, wherever they should find it, sometimes leaving notes or small farewell gifts for their loved ones. No one would look for them, for lycans the wandering was as much a part of life as birth.  
  
There wasn’t much Quinn could do for the adults who decided not to get treated, their way was their way and they did not appreciate being told that it was backward, even if sometimes she felt it was; but she could do something for the children. Most everyone would agree at the very least that anything that could be done for the cubs in their care should be done. It wasn’t much, but she worked with what she could and hoped that the others would come around.  
  
Maybe one day when she had treatments she didn’t have to classify as experimental, when they could see for themselves that life could go on and medicine did not have to be invasive or as unnatural as they feared. Maybe then.  
  
 _ **Areeya Arak :** Age-6 , Sex- Alpha female, Origin- Thailand, Wolf Genus- Canis lupus dingo  
  
 **Symptoms :** high fever, bloody discharge, irritability, loss of appetite.  
  
 **Treatment :** testing for L-1 H _  
  
Areeya Arak’s eyes had taken on a glassy stare, her skin a yellow and spotted pallor as she lay limply in her bed, staring sightlessly at the curtains that made up the walls of her room. Quinn had run across these symptoms before but only the blood work would confirm whether or not the girl had a similar viral strand to the other thirty seven cases she’d been able to document. What she’d deemed L-1 Hepatitis was strikingly similar to an infection found in common canines: Infectious Canine Hepatitis. Though every known case of a wild wolf that had contracted the virus had recovered from it, only sixty percent of the cases of L-1 H that she’d managed to confirm had recovered and Quinn did not like those odds. They were less than even the survival rates in dogs, and it was baffling given the regenerative advantages of lycan DNA.  
  
There were several vaccines for ICH in common dogs but Quinn had only made minimal progress with them so far. Lycan’s were not common canines and not human either. They were in a class all their own and there was _something_ disrupting this girls natural ability to heal and she didn’t know the first clue where to begin stopping it. She was one woman, more a doctor than an able bodied scientist, and too much of her knowledge had been scrapped together from long hours at the Westerville public library and bang ups in the laboratory.  
  
“Areeya? Can you sit up and drink this for me?” Quinn watched the young girl carefully as she slowly raised herself to sitting, staring at the plastic water bottle that Quinn held with disinterest. “You need to stay hydrated, alright dear? There you go.” She smiled encouragingly as the girl reached listlessly for the bottle bringing the straw to her lips and sucking slowly.  
  
“Now I want you to drink all of that and call for a nurse when you’ve finished okay? They’re going to run some tests, and hopefully we can get you feeling better soon.” Quinn waited for a signal of understanding from the child but Areeya simply stared past Quinn, taking slow sips. When Quinn finally exited the room Raj was waiting for her outside of the curtain.  
  
“I retrieved her records so that we can begin notifying her parents” he stated with practiced quiet, making sure his voice would not carry to Areeya’s ears.  
  
“Thank you,” Quinn smiled briefly at him as she took the manila folder from his brown hands and began asking even as she flipped through the first few pages, “Are they civilian?” So many lycans the world over did not live civilian lives, preferring (or forced more often than not) to live in the wild, constantly on the move and ever wary of Hunters.  
  
“Afraid not, her sires are a Kiet and Madee Arak.”  
  
“Nomadic pack, their last correspondence was from Udon Thani,” Quinn murmured as she skimmed the information in the girl’s file.  
  
“She’s got an older brother who returned to Thailand last year, as well as an older sister who is still here training with the guard” Raj informed her helpfully and Quinn nodded.  
  
“Right, get word to Allie so she can notify the sister and call for a carrier. The sooner we track down the parents the better. I want to see if she responds to the latest version of the vaccine.”  
  
Raj did not respond but Quinn heard the quiet huff he made. When she glanced up from Areeya’s file she was not surprised to be met with a disapproving stare. Disappointed but not surprised.  
  
“Is there a problem?” She asked and she could see the omega male deciding whether or not to risk angering her by challenging her authority. Quinn ran an airtight infirmary not because she particularly enjoyed being a hard ass but because she’d learned very quickly that to most of the pack, her being human was something of a crime. She was here on Blaine’s say so but that didn’t mean she was wholly accepted, or that even the lowest omega would respect her authority.  
  
She couldn’t afford softness with her assistants. They came in thinking working with Blaine’s pet doctor would be an easy assignment, and the human female who was supposed to be their teacher easy to cow. They’d get away with murder if she let them.  
  
Raj had been her first and they’d had their bumps and bruises along the way but the omega male was invaluable to her now, and Quinn had been gratified to see that once he applied that quick wit of his to something other than giving her hell he was turning into quite the competent physician and an able bodied scientist in his own right. Not for the first time she wished that more lycan’s attended universities. Raj could do so much for his community with the right education and she was afraid that her haphazard brand of field education was a disservice to him.  
  
“She’s six years old Quinn.”  
  
“I know how old she is Raj.”  
  
“So don’t you think it’s a bit cruel, prolonging her suffering?”  
  
“No crueler than dying at the age of six.” Raj clucked his tongue, his soft brown eyes leaving hers as he turned his head away from her.  
  
“It’s interesting how humans view death as a cruelty.”  
  
“And how would you view it Raj?”  
  
“As death,” he stated simply nodding toward the curtain wall of Areeya’s room. “If she were with her parents the conditions of the wild would finish her before her illness could. Is it cruel, when her body would provide sustenance for some other creature? Life and death are just a circle. That is just the way things are.”  
  
Quinn let his statement hang as she walked past the partitioned rooms and toward her desk station at the north end of the infirmary. Raj followed her, watching as she tossed Areeya’s file on her desk and grabbed her medical bag from the bottom drawer.  
  
“Lycans have a very animal view of the world,” she finally said as she shrugged the heavy bag onto one shoulder, smiling gratefully as Raj handed her the camera she kept in the top drawer as well as her smart phone.  
  
“And humans are above it I suppose?” he asked, tensing, and Quinn sighed.  
  
“No. Sometimes I envy it. There is more mercy in it.”  
  
“Mercy, Mistress?” Two years and Quinn still cringed at that title. She knew that as an omega apprentice it would mean something far worse if Raj _didn’t_ offer her the title, that indeed it would reflect poorly on her if he didn’t, but Raj was barely a year younger than she was. She’d had to put him in his place yes, back when he thought his job and she were some sort of joke, but she’d never been bored at least. Back then Quinn had never wondered what he thought or if he might hold something important back out of fear. She had eyes. She knew certain things were expected of omegas. She worried about Beth being an omega constantly and did not want to feed into the a system she was wary of.  
  
All this yes mistress, and asking for permission for the simplest things… It made her feel like she’d stepped into ‘Gone With The Wind’ when he carried on like that and not in the good way.  
  
“Life is a circle, fine, but all creatures fight for survival, yeah?” She asked as she scrawled a few hasty notes in the girls file and Raj nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing suspiciously at her. Quinn grinned, relieved at the honesty in the expression. She handed him back Areeya’s file as she asked “So why is that?”  
  
“It’s instinct” he replied confidently. “Without survival instinct how would any species stand the test of time?”  
  
“Instinct.” She hummed and Raj nodded again. “An animal fights to survive because the programing is innate. Maybe they don’t know what it means to really _want_ to live, to pick life apart by its moments and assign value to the simple act of living, value to every part of living that provides even the smallest measure of comfort. If they did, Raj, they’d know what it means to mourn. Someone will mourn that little girl, like the pack mourns David and Flint, like Wes is mourning for Emma…”  
  
Drawn like magnets both their eyes found the room where Emma lay comatose, Wes at her bed side clinging to her hand as he played a hideous game of waiting. What ailed Emma wasn’t physical but mental, and Quinn was powerless to do anything but make the woman feel comfortable and safe. Flint had driven her so far under she might never find her way back.  
  
“When those things start to have value, even a stranger’s life starts becoming precious to you. That’s when you start to hate death Raj, because now anything can hurt you. And when you realize that one day it won’t just be strangers who die and other people who lose what matters to them, that one day it will be you and the people you love, then you’re afraid. Then you’d do just about anything to stop it. So I do envy you. I envy you a great deal but I just can’t accept it like you do. I can’t think that way.”  
  
Raj gazed soulfully at her for a moment before he blinked, finally nodding as he sighed.  
  
“I know.”  
  
~**~  
  
Port Columbus International was teeming that morning. The midday crowds pressed in on each other as people hurried from gate to gate, mothers dragging over loaded suitcases and trailing children with the busy air of bees. It made Puck itch, so many people crammed into one place, filing in long lines like ants. Burt who was sitting across from him at a table at the Starbucks just looked grim, his eyes darting through the crowds as they waited on a sign of Rachel with Finn and Carole.  
  
It had taken quite a bit of talking but when Burt had learned that it wasn’t just him but Carole and Finn in danger as well, he’d agreed to get on a plane to an undisclosed flight to an undisclosed safe location. The sooner they got on that plane the better. Once Kurt’s family was tucked away at the safe house Puck could breathe easy, but until then he couldn’t help but jump at every unfamiliar sound and be suspicious of every single person that passed them.  
  
Burt’s close call with the leech had been _too_ close. Puck doubted he still had a tail on Burt since he’d run off to lick his wounds after their fight but there was no telling about Finn and Carole, and no telling even if the Vampire wasn’t working with others. If Balaur was truly behind it all he wouldn’t expect any less.  
  
The vamp could have gone to Lima and could even now be trying to make a hit there. Rachel had driven up the night before and was escorting Kurt’s step mother and brother to the airport just in case there was trouble on their end. They’d been waiting at a Starbucks for thirty minutes, twenty past when Rachel had said they’d arrive and it had been hours since David had checked in with him.  
  
“You heard anything?” Burt asked, voice low, and Puck shook his head. His leg was bouncing anxiously as he surveyed the crowd hoping that any moment now he’d spot Finn towering over everybody or sense Rachel’s arrival.  
  
“No. But that doesn’t mean anything” he responded and Burt turned to pin him with a hard stare.  
  
“What do you mean it doesn’t mean anything? ” he huffed. “They’re late. Nobody’s answering their phone. That doesn’t mean anything to you?”  
  
“I’m just saying it doesn’t mean the worst. You don’t know Rachel okay, she’s dead set on being a pack leader. She doesn’t let _anything_ get in her way. The plan was that if they couldn’t make it here they’d head to Westerville and contact us at the safe house-”  
  
“Which is where?” Burt demanded. “You don’t know, and the guy coordinating it all isn’t answering his phone either.”  
  
Puck glanced at the pay as you go phone Wes had given him in Westerville when he’d first received his instructions but it remained mockingly quiet.  
  
“He’ll contact us alright. We can’t panic.”  
  
He didn’t know who he was trying to convince. He hadn’t felt the same since Rachel had left. He was totally wired. He kept feeling like there was something he’d forgotten to do, or some appointment he’d missed. He was getting too used to her being around, was the thing. But maybe that was good, because after this there was no telling where he’d end up. He’d never had a real home before this, but Columbus wouldn’t really be home anymore once Shelby kicked him out of the guard; which she was sure to do now that he’d fallen off the grid on another Alpha’s orders. He’d known that going in though. He’d do what he had to, because he owed Anderson, because if Anderson went down they were all going down, and most importantly of all there was Beth to think of.  
  
He didn’t know why Rachel had agreed to help a backwards alpha who had thus far screwed up in every way possible but she had, and he was damn glad he didn’t have to do this alone. Even if he felt like he should make her stay behind, because helping him meant she’d be a traitor too, and it meant the end of her dream of becoming pack Alpha. Was it selfish to be so glad she wouldn’t listen to him?  
  
“Panic?” Burt scoffed interrupting his thoughts, “Puck panic is not what’s going on here. What’s going on is there’s a lunatic vampire out to get my family, they’re late, no one’s heard from them and we’re just _sitting_ here-”  
  
At that moment the phone laying on the table lit up, vibrating with an incoming text. He could have shouted in relief when he saw David’s number glowing on the screen. Puck grabbed for it so fast his bruised his knuckles on the table.  
  
 **DThompson** : _Rachel ran into trouble. On her way to the house. Sending someone to you. Rendezvous at terminal A._  
  
“What’s happening?” Burt demanded as Puck read, relief washing through him.  
  
“David just texted, Rachel ran into trouble. They’re on their way to Anderson’s and they are sending someone to meet us,” Puck replied but all he could hear was his own heart drumming in his ears.  
  
They’d be fine. Rachel would get Finn and Carole to Westerville and nothing would happen to them in the meantime. They’d be fine, they’d be fine… she’d be fine.  
  
“Thank god,” Burt sagged in relief and Puck silently agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were going to ask, yes you're gonna learn more about the Vryloka and why that's such a big deal to everyone. Yes, David apparently just texted from the grave and yep that's not typically something even lycans can do. So what gives? Only nine chapters left. James has been setting the stage for his big show so it's about time the curtains went up wouldn't you say. That said, Kurt and Blaine are going to have to drag themselves out of bed now. Though I hope you appreciated that bed. :P There's so much they've got to deal with. Burying David and Flint, figuring out what happened to Stevie, Sebastian's going to try to kill Lina. What the hell happened with Lina and Jame's anyway? She says Benito isn't Blaine's (Blaine says Benito isn't Blaine's) but she also said her mate was some alpha who died. So what's with James? Is she an innocent victim in all of this or is she as clever as Sorsha seems to think? She clearly hasn't told Kurt everything, but then again Blaine hasn't told Kurt everything either. Word to the wise, the truth always outs. Our intrepid heroes are about to learn why It's always just best to be honest with people from the beginning.*cackles into the night* I'll stop torturing you now. See you in a week or so.


	27. 25: The Body

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bp!Kurt (no sex but discussion), some discussion of body dismorphia, and Finn gets shot (no death). I thought I'd warn for this in light of recent events.Over the course of this series and the ongoing war between the various species I had planned for many injuries as well as deaths and I want to stay true to that but Cory's passing did change my plans some. :) I have plans for him so keep that in mind but it could be triggery for some. Be wise lovelies and only read what you feel you can handle.

The body was so mangled it was unrecognizable even as human, let alone a lycan teenager, but there was so much blood everywhere that it was impossible for Sebastian to miss the fact that it was omega blood currently leaking all over his back porch. The poor kid had been slashed to pieces by an obviously bigger and stronger wolf but that wasn’t what troubled Sebastian about it. It was the note placed almost artfully in the kid’s mouth.

_Shhh Sebby. Let’s keep this our little secret._

James. Sebastian had no idea who the kid was but he could guess why the Master would drop his body here. It was a warning, an exclamation point on the message he’d rammed into Sebastian’s throat only hours before that he had no idea what he was dealing with. A wolf had done this and James would know what that would lead Sebastian to believe. And now he had no other choice but to get rid of it if he wanted any chance at getting his revenge on the Medici’s and making it out of Westerville before either Blaine or James rained hell on his head. He didn’t know who he feared catching up with him first, the mythical king or the mythical fiend.

He stared into the gaping eye sockets of the body and his hand began to shake. Definitely the fiend. After all, the fiend had killed the king in the end.

Sebastian crumpled the bloodied note and kicked the mangled carcass off his doorstep with a snarl. In the doorway Nick and Thad watched him silent but wary.

“Burry it,” he snapped. “Call the others in. We’re relocating until nightfall.”

“Sebastian, they’ll come looking.” Nick’s glare was hard. Sebastian knew what he wanted and it almost made him angrier than the body. Nick wasn’t afraid of a fight with Anderson’s pack he was just trying to save his little fuck toy’s ass. It was infuriating, because he and Nick had been through hell together. He’d always depended on Nick being behind him and one fuck with some floppy haired twink and all of that went out the window.

“Let them!” _He_ wasn’t a coward, Sebastian refused to run with his tail between his legs. He would not return to his homeland or his elders in shame because he was frightened by bedtime stories! “We’ll kill whoever comes looking. We’ll tear apart this entire town if we have to but we’re not leaving until the bitch is dead.”

“Or us?” Nick asked pointedly.

“You said that you would die for the honor of the clan, Duval,” Sebastian sneered in reply. “Or did you forget that now that you’re fucking a pack dog?”

“Watch it Smythe,” Nick growled in warning and on any other day he might have let it go but today was today. Sebastian snapped, backhanding the shorter man across the cheek with a satisfying crack and a scream of rage.

“I am your Alpha! Are you threatening _me_ Duval?”

Nick whipped his head around snarling with fury and pain but he was disoriented and much too slow for Sebastian who had never needed to _tear_ something as much as he wanted to tear the skin off Nick’s face, wipe away the judgment he saw in those mocking eyes. Sebastian shoved him against the side of the house, claws digging deeply into his shoulders, tearing the shirt he wore.

“Did you forget what they did?” He lifted Nick by the neck just to slam him back again. “Did you?!”

“No,” Nick barely managed to grunt through the squeeze on his windpipe. “No, Alpha.”

“Good,” he spat letting Nick fall and crumple to the porch. “Because I’d see us all rotting in hell before I let our enemies laugh at the name of MacTere. Everybody got me?”

The Hunters had skinned his mother and hung her pelt up like a trophy. Sebastian would send Benito Medici his daughters head in return if he had to spill blood from here to Italy. That he swore.

~*~*~

Waiting for David’s signal was torture for both Puck and Burt. The only relief was when one of the baristas came by offering free samples of some seasonal drink. It tasted like shit as far as Puck was concerned (kind of metallic) but his taste buds were different than most humans so he figured it was probably just an overload of sugar. Burt didn’t seem to like it either.

“Kurt’s crazy about this stuff but I’ll take mine black any day of the week,” he’d muttered with a grimace, tossing his sample cup into a nearby trashcan.

When they’d run out of things to say about the coffee it was more waiting, and more waiting, Puck’s leg bouncing under the table and his palms beginning to sweat as he battled with his nerves and felt increasingly exhausted.

Then finally it came, the buzzing of an incoming text.

 **DThompson** : _He’s on his way. Go now._

Right. Puck flipped the phone in his hands and stood, shoving the device into his coat pocket as he gestured for Burt to follow him.

“Time to go?” Burt asked as he stood to follow and Puck nodded.

“Yeah Thompson said he should be there in a minute. We’re good to go.” Terminal A was all the way on the other side of the airport. Puck and Rachel had chosen the busiest part of the airport to meet up to better blend in with the crowds.

“So who’s meeting us?” Burt asked, weaving through a gaggle of young students being led around by a couple of harried looking adults.

“Probably Crawford,” Puck responded absently, focusing on the faces around them and keeping a close eye on all their exits.

“You mean he didn’t tell you?” Burt’s question gave him pause, a feeling of unease creeping up his spine but he shook it off as more nerves. He’d been all nerves since Rachel had left and that was just pathetic. What sort of Alpha was he if he couldn’t even be left alone to manage something as simple as getting on a plane without needing someone (and Berry of all people) to hold his hand?

“I’ll recognize them. You’re an important package to deliverer safely and they won’t just send anyone. I’ve spent a lot of time with Blaine’s guard so don’t worry.” Burt stopped in his tracks without a reply and it took Puck a second or two to realize that the older man was no longer following him. Burt was just standing there, a grim look on his face and Puck had a very strong feeling that he wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

“Look, Puck, I appreciate you trying to keep us safe- especially Carole and Finn- but the only reason I agreed to this is because of them. I didn’t want them to be whisked off to god only knows where and have the whole family separated and worried about each other; but if we’re going to Westerville then I’m not leaving Westerville without seeing Kurt.”

“Burt-”

“No, listen. This maniac is after my son and you have no idea what he is capable of. He would have killed us both if not for Rachel showing up and even then it was a close call. I’m not leaving him to deal with that while I hide.”

“Burt honestly the best thing you can do for Kurt is to hide. Because you’re right, he’s too strong. Blaine hasn’t even told Kurt about the vampire attacks and what they mean because he knows Kurt will be just like you, unable to do the smart thing and keep his head down. “

“Is that a fact?” Burt barked a laugh, crossing his arms. “Well good. This Blaine guy’s doing all the work for me. I was afraid I’d have to put a bag over Kurt’s head and drag him home but I ought to just sit back because Kurt is going to lose it when he finds out you kept this from him. You can’t just decide something like this for somebody.”

“I haven’t decided anything,” Puck replied with a shrug. “Blaine did, so he must not be too worried. Kurt’s his mate it’s not like he could leave…” Puck faltered, eyeing Burt warily when the older man’s eyes narrowed and he searched for a way to explain things that wouldn’t set him off again. He hadn’t exactly been well receiving of any of Puck’s attempts thus far. “Look, Blaine’s the law. He’s the Alpha so what he says goes and if he says no then it’s no. Maybe he’ll say yes, but first we’ve got to get there.” Puck nodded toward the direction they needed to go in and began to walk again, gratified when Burt followed.

“Yeah, we’ll see. You know me better than that. And you _really_ don’t know Kurt” he heard the older man grumble under his breath and Puck was just glad he wasn’t in Anderson’s shoe. Burt was a good guy he was just worried about Kurt. He didn’t understand Lycans and he was afraid that Kurt was being manipulated somehow or held against his will, which Puck could understand. He just needed time to see that Kurt was happy and that Lycan’s were nothing to be afraid of and Puck was fairly certain he’d come around. The sooner they got to Westerville the better.

Burt and Puck didn’t make it there, at least not that day.

When they made it to terminal A it didn’t happen immediately. Puck steered them off to the side and searched through the faces in the crowd for a familiar one and saw none of the guard wolves he’d worked with before. They’d been waiting a good twenty minutes when a feeling of unease came over him. He began to kick himself for not listening to Burt’s concerns and there were no answered texts from David. He had just been about to take Burt and figure out getting to Westerville on their own when a pair of security officers approached them.

“Are you Burt Hummel?” One, a tall muscular brunette demanded, but puck was more concerned with the gun he wore so visibly on his belt. Burt looked hesitantly to Puck for one moment before nodding slowly.

“Yeah?”

“Right,” the guy’s partner said. “We’re going to need you to come with us.”

“Wait a minute what for?” Puck interjected as the brunette actually made to grab Burt by the arm. He knew you weren’t supposed to grab a police officer, but he also knew they weren’t supposed to grab you without cause either.

“Let go sir or we’ll place you under arrest” the guy’s partner warned him.

“I don’t give a shit about arrest. We’re not going anywhere with you. Let go of him or I’ll _make_ you let go.”

The guy with the muscles grinned at him, creepy clown grinning, and Puck shivered as the guy taunted lowly, “try it.” Something about the way he said it, like he knew something that Puck didn’t made him feel panicked. He tried to bare his teeth and growl in warning but… nothing. The wolf wouldn’t come. He just felt cold and tired and weirdly like his mouth was numb. What the hell! Why couldn’t he shift? Where was his wolf? Puck sucked in a sharp breath as his heart leaped in panic, his body breaking out in a cold sweat.

When the guy holding Burt turned to smirk at his partner that’s when Puck saw it. Just below his collar were two tiny marks: a vampire bite.

~*~*~*~

The phone rang endlessly without answer before finally switching to an automatic messaging system. Adam hung up the phone in his hand and sighed. Puck had not answered his phone and Adam had already spoken to his parents to confirm that Puck and his party had not arrived at the safe house either. It was worrying to say the least but there was hope. Puck not answering his own phone could have simply been explained by the loss of David’s. The alpha had been instructed only to respond to David’s number but unfortunately it was nowhere to be found. Adam had searched his room as well as his body to no avail and David wasn’t there to tell them where he’d stashed it.

On a scale, Adam couldn’t say this was the worst day he’d ever had. Compared to having to kill his own sister, this wasn’t a bad day. There had been some truly horrible ones, days far darker than today, during the last Alpha’s rein including that day they’d found what Julian had left of Kala, but today was definitely up there on the do over list. David was gone, a thought that he still had not accepted despite the reality of a body that needed disposing of. Blaine would have handled the funeral preparation normally but Blaine was otherwise preoccupied, which was both a blessing and a curse. He was thankful for his Alpha’s happiness, for the fulfillment Blaine had found in mating, because now more than ever the pack needed something hopeful.

Anyone who thought being Alpha was all about control (as simple as barking to get their way) didn’t understand what having an Alpha meant to the rest of the pack. Whenever one of them felt lost, whenever there was hurt or trouble, there was always the Alpha to lean on, a sense of solidarity in an otherwise turbulent world. When it came down to it there was great comfort in trusting that their Alpha would care for them, that they were not required to do anything more than trust him and stand behind him for the good of all. They drew strength from his strength, happiness from his happiness, purpose from his purpose.

Because Blaine was a solid foundation, radiating peace and contentment, Adam found he was able to pick up the pieces of his morning and do all the things Blaine needed him to do in his absence, despite the losses he’d suffered… despite the startling revelation he’d had that not only did he want to dominate his teenage apprentice, that pushed to a certain edge he would. That morning he’d completely lost his senses and there was no excuse for it. He’d wanted to hold himself so much further above that and he’d failed himself.

It was not a pleasant admission, but nothing about the morning could be called pleasant anyway, and with Wes stuck to Emma’s bedside Adam had far too much to deal with to focus on that right now. No matter how doggedly Chandler tried to bring it up.

Adam found Wes where he’d left him, sitting vigil at Emma’s bedside. The mind of the omega woman had fled to that unstudied and indescribable space that all subs had. It was a place cloistered away from the world and anything else that might harm her but it was also a place that many subs needed time and coaxing to come back from under the best of circumstances and this was certainly not the best. She had slipped so far under she was in a coma for which there wasn’t a cure, just time, and Emma’s will to find her way out of it. Her dominants presence was essential right now and as such Wes hadn’t left her side. 

He was holding her hand and whispering something in her ear when Adam and Chandler walked in and immediately he looked up.

“Any news?” he asked and Adam shook his head.

“We’ve gotten the bodies moved and ready for their passing rituals, but still no sign of the phone.”

“And Puck’s following direction and not answering?” Wes guessed and Adam nodded in response. The Beta’s gaze then flicked to Chandler at his side.

“Allie has started organizing the start of decontaminating the school,” Chandler reported his back straightening the way it always did when he was called to give a report. Usually Adam thought pretty fondly on his eagerness but this morning he could hardly look at him. Not after the way he’d acted. “Quinn thinks that girl has a virus and wants everything sanitized, scrubbed down, and a whole bunch of other things that means moving the students around. Allie wants to know what we’re supposed to do with them all.”

“Split them up among the mated couples?” Adam stepped closer to Wes seemingly trying to gage how he felt about the idea, more honestly to put space between him and his protégé. “Get each couple to take a group for the day?” Wes frowned in concentration.

“The students outnumber the adults. Won’t they be overwhelmed?”

“Do we have much other choice?”

“What about the house?” Chandler piped in and both adults raised their brows at the same time. “I mean can’t they go to the manor house? It’s big enough and they could stay with their den mothers and the house omegas could help.”

As far as ideas went it wasn’t bad and Adam could feel Chandler’s eyes burning into his back, seeking approval but he didn’t turn, watching Wes carefully and waiting for his response.

“You’d need Blaine’s approval,” the Beta decided and Adam nodded unable to stop a slight grin as Wes grimaced. “Good luck. If Kurt’s still in the throes of heat he’s not going to want another Alpha within twenty feet of him. He’s likely to kill you first and ask questions later. Quinn had to talk to him earlier and he wouldn’t even open the door. I think her not being lycan made the wolf uneasy.”

“I could try,” Chandler offered and when Wes gave him a doubting look he nodded his head adamantly and rocked forward on his heels. “Blaine’s all heat addled right? Which means he’s super protective and suspicious but he’s also hyper sensitive right? So I’ll play up my sub side. He won’t want to hurt little old me.”

“That’s not a good idea.” Adam said it before he really thought about it so when Wes was looking at him with a question behind his eyes and Chandler’s eyes were boring into his with something too close to hurt he scrambled to find a good reason for it.

“What are you talking about?” Chandler asked. “It’s genius.”

What _was_ he talking about? Because Chandler was right. He was the perfect person to send. He wouldn’t be easily cowed like one of the omegas and he could be submissive enough to fly under Blaine’s radar, plus there was the added benefit of his friendship with Kurt. Kurt might not be happy to be interrupted but his bond with Chandler would give the teenager more clout than any of the others and Kurt’s trust would calm Blaine.

But Chandler would also be subjected to Kurt’s pheromones and his body would naturally respond, increasing his own hormone levels as well as his chances of going into heat; which Adam knew all too well, having had their bodies pressed flush together and his nose buried against his skin earlier that day.

Was it likely that a short trip to the room would throw him into heat _that_ quickly? Not really. It wasn’t a good idea simply because Adam was afraid, on edge, and it was already a struggle for him concentrating on business when Chandler smelled like a promise of heaven and he kept cutting his tongue on his teeth he was so eager to bite.

He wasn’t about to say that however so he went with the next plausible excuse.

“We still have to catch the rogue that attacked the Evan’s boy. We’ve got half the guard out looking and the other half on patrol to keep the rest of the students safe. But Quinn wants to go to go to the attack site and see if she can’t gather some evidence that our scouts may have missed.” Chandler just looked boggled by this and Wes looked skeptical.

“No offense to Quinn but her nose and her eyes are much weaker than ours. What does she hope to do that we can’t?” the Beta asked.

“Forensics or something… like that show CSI you like.”

“I had no idea she could do that. They always use a lot of machines.”

“She’s the doctor.” Adam shrugged. “She must know something of how it works.”

“Yeah that’s great and all but what does it have to do with me… Alpha” Chandler tacked on the title last minute but Adam still gave him a warning look. He really wasn’t in the frame of mind to handle any sass from the younger wolf; he was too close to dragging him off to a dark corner as it was. Chandler’s restless energy as well as his unhidden frustration with Adam was making him want to push the younger man against the wall and… well, best not to think about any of that.

“She shouldn’t go back to the attack site alone.” Wes agreed without Adam having to say it. “I’d send Jeff with her, he’s got the best nose, but there’s been no word from him?” Adam heard the question in the statement, felt the need for hope coming from the Beta and he shook his head sadly. Jeff was in a world of trouble wherever he was but at this point Wes was just hoping he’d show up. The longer he remained missing the more worried they all were becoming.

“So it looks like you’re up Chandler,” Wes sighed and Chandler nodded, looking slightly mulish but knowing better than to argue. “That still doesn’t solve our problem. The rogue and Jeff are one thing but Puck being MIA is another. We can’t take any risks. I hate to do it but Blaine has got to cut his bonding time short. We need someone to get him, preferably without dying for the effort.”

“Trent or Rory?” Adam suggested. “They’re betas too.”

“Yeah but they’re not especially close to either Kurt or Blaine and I really think it’s the bond more than the submissiveness that’s going to keep whoever goes in there from losing their head.”

Wes was right, and with a sinking feeling Adam began to think that there was no way around sending Chandler when a bright burst of energy surged from his teenage protégé and Chandler clapped his hands together, everything about his expression shouting ureka.

“Lina!” He crowed. “She’s an omega so she won’t tick Blaine off and she’s close to both Kurt _and_ Blaine.

“That could definitely work,” Adam agreed with relief and Chandler beamed smugly at him.

“Didn’t I tell you? Am I a genius or am I a genius?”

No matter how hard he tried Adam couldn’t stop his smile. The problem with Chandler he decided, was that he was too damn adorable for either of their good.

~*~*~*~

_Earlier that day_

Rachel had arrived early to Lima that morning as planned and parked outside of the Hummel’s house and honked for Kurt’s stepmother and stepbrother but the house had remained silent and still as if nobody where home. They’d been instructed not to answer the door for anyone so she’d waited anxiously for a moment or two for one of them to peek out a window and spot the car they’d been tol she’d be driving, her nerves winding with every second that passed with no sign of movement from the house. She’d even wrung the stepbrother, Finn’s cell, but no answer. She’d finally been forced to get up and approach the house, worried that they may have overslept or that worse something may have happened to them.

It was obvious by the door left ajar, and the hastily packed bags abandoned in the front hall that something indeed _had_ happened, and recently, if the lingering scents of blood and gunpowder were anything to go by. Rachel fear clutching tightly at her Rachel carefully surveyed the front hall, piecing together what had happened before her arrival by sight and scent. Two humans (male and female, the female wearing an expensive flowery deodorant) both of them armed (two different types of powder) had come to the door. Despite instruction to answer for no one Kurt’s stepmother had answered (women’s perfume and female hormones). There was a scuffle (drops of blood, umbrella holder knocked over).

Likely the step brother had rushed over at the sounds of the fight (fresher men’s cologne, fresher blood, a cracked mirror, a bullet hole in the ceiling, another in the wall, blood splatter near it and a trail of blood leading out the door). Someone (likely a male) had been shot. They must have gone quietly after that because despite the clear trail leading out the door there was no more blood, not enough blood to signal either Finn or Carole had been killed on site anyway. Rachel fired off a text to the number Puck had given her for his contact in Westerville and checked every room of the house just to be sure.

Then she made a snap decision to strip, storing her clothes and her phone in her jeep. Outside the scents were harder to pick up (too many outside smells and distractions) but now that she was looking for them she could see the occasional drop of blood on the driveway, a foot print, and tire tracks that may or may not have belonged to whatever vehicle the abductors had arrived in. She’d been kicking herself for allowing it to happen. They’d all thought they had more time, that even if the vampire was working with others that they’d be hampered by the sunlight (the way all vampires were). They’d completely discounted thralls, arrogantly believing they could handle any human interference. But fortune was on her side because the very thing that was distracting her nose turned out to be her golden ticket. There shining on the asphalt between the tires tracks was a small puddle of gasoline.

The vehicle the abductors had arrived in had been leaking gasoline, the smell pungent and sharp in her sensitive nose and only more so once she’d shifted. It was easy to pick out over the more muddled scent notes of asphalt and burnt rubber. She couldn’t be more than twenty minutes or so behind them by the strength of the scents in the house and with a leak like that in the gas tank they wouldn’t get very far without having to stop. Even with those fortunate favors tracking them wouldn’t be easy but Rachel had little other choice. There was no telling what the vampire’s plans were for them and she’d promised Noah that they’d she’d keep Kurt’s stepmother and brother safe. She wasn’t about to go back on her word.

~*~*~*~

_‘You cannot do this to Gwyn, Arthur’_

_‘Why do you lecture me, Lancelot, as if I don’t know my duty.’_

_‘Do you?’_

_‘Aye I know it! It is the noose around my neck.’_

_The wind and the rain beat at the castle walls. The words he’d heard spoken between his husband and Arthur’s champion knight reverberated in Gwyn’s head. The tempest was not unusual for that time of the year but there had been something supernatural about how swiftly it had seemed to come on, how fiercely it raged, but perhaps that was merely the darkness of his mood talking. Like the tempest bellowing outside, inside of Camelot’s queen a storm raged. Gwyn’s mood was black and only blackening further as the minutes passed without Arthur’s return._

_That had been the start of it. Arthur had ridden out earlier in the day without guard or attendant as he was prone to doing of late and not even Lancelot had been able to get him to stay. The first time it had happened Gwyn had been stung, for in all things he and Arthur were united. They were closer than brothers. They had to be for their spirits were united in a union stronger than marriage. To be shut away from Arthur’s heart and mind was wretched. He’d rather have been locked outside the castle gate in the cruelest of winters and left to freeze. It would have been an easier death._

_He turned on the bed and tried to stave away his guilt for in his heart he knew he was too harsh on Arthur._

_Gwyn knew well the trials of leadership, the burden of being King, so at the first he had kept his silence and allowed Arthur to seek his solace alone if that is where he thought he’d find it. Only Arthur hadn’t found it alone but in the arms of a woman, an enchantress named Morgana whose enmity towards the crown was only as strong as her bitterness towards Gwyn._

_Gwyn was many things, but a woman he was not, no matter that he pretended to be. He knew Arthur did not love him or desire his body like a lover. He better than anyone could understand the temptation to slack his lusts in a stranger’s bed. If Gwyn could have had anything in the world it would have been Lancelot but he had married a King to save first his sister life and then his own. He could not now afford selfishness, not at cost to the kingdom, not when falling in love with someone else would hurt Arthur so._

_Morgana had been made cruel in her jealousy, driven by it and her insatiable thirst for vengeance against the father who had betrayed her and the man who had rejected her._

_She need not have been so jealous. Gwyn could not compete for Arthur’s love. Though Arthur had tried to keep his feelings for the woman locked secret within himself Gwyn was his mate. There was nothing that Arthur could successful keep locked away from him. Arthur’s love for another was between them numbing Gwyn like a cold wind, bringing with it a winter that would not abate._

_How could Gwyn not know when his eyes followed another, when every day that passed they grew further apart? Where once they had been as close to one as two souls could get, now Arthur would ride away, hiding himself and when Gwyn reached for him he would be met with empty space._

_They were both bound to this union. Was he to suffer it alone while Arthur found happiness with another?_

_The Queen sat up in bed, suddenly unable to abide laying there like some withering maiden waiting for her errant lover to return. He was the prince of Gwent! The Queen of Camelot! He would have been a King if his father hadn’t tried to sell his sister into a life chained to a man she didn’t love. Guinevere would have tried to run and she’d have been killed. It was one thing for him to try and trick Arthur and make a run for it but his sister was a noble lady and had none of his experience as a fighter. He had made his choices and could not regret saving her life, nor the happy life he knew she had now with the man she loved._

_He envied her it, though he tried not to._

_He was dead to everything he’d known before Arthur, trapped in a life not his own. His true name was tarnished as that of a runaway and dishonored son. His true identity lethal to him should anyone outside of Arthur’s circle discover it. He would never know love unless Arthur gave it to him. How could he not envy his sister her love?_

_Gwyn walked from the bed to the mirror and sat before it staring intensely at his reflection._

_“Gwyn the fair, too pretty to be a boy,” he murmured as he lifted his long hair away from his neck and considered his fair skin, the prominence of his cheekbones, the unusual softness of his features. “And yet too much a man.”_

_He lowered his honeyed lashes demurely, the same way Guinevere always had, the way that had every Bard in the seven lands singing of the beauty of the Queen of Camelot. If only they knew that Arthur wouldn’t touch his bride. Wouldn’t it cause such a stir?_

_“I hate him,” he whispered in the quiet of the room. It was inexplicably relieving to admit it, so relieving he barked a laugh. If only he would have known it would be so easy to say and make him feel so much lighter he’d have screamed it from the tallest tower long ago. He found it easy to continue now his voice rising with conviction as the fury he’d kept buried within himself for months finally surged to the surface. “How dare he? I am chained to his crown, to a life and a name not my own and he speaks of nooses! I am his noose? Well then by god he’ll hang by my name I vow!”_

_He swept his hand over the table, sending the items that covered it crashing to the floor. He cursed and stood with such speed he sent the bench toppling over, thudding loudly on the stone floor. The wolf in his spirit surged to the surface and he turned, intent to let it have him, but he was caught suddenly in the arms of Lancelot and gripped tightly to his taller frame._

_“Gwyn? What is wro-”_

_Without thought Gwyn grabbed for the startled knight, pulling their lips together in a violent crash and growling at the resistance he found there. Lancelot tasted lightly of ale, his mouth warm and beautifully responsive beneath his own, and Gwyn had never tasted anything so addictive as that because it was Lancelot and there wasn’t a part of them that wasn’t made for the other. He had always known it would be so, and feared it. Now he would not apologize for it._

_Gwyn’s hands framed his face in a desperate grip as their mouths move together and Lancelot shuddered. He nipped at the knight’s lower lip and chase after the hints of copper and salt that mingled between their mouths. They pulled away only when their lungs demanded it, resting their brows against the other, panting for their breath._

_“Make love to me Lancelot,” he heard himself plea but he could feel no embarrassment. He was so horribly cold inside and Lancelot’s kiss was like a fire in his veins._

_“No.” Ever so damn loyal to Arthur his love denied him. “I’ll talk to him Gwyn I’ll shake him until he sees what he does to you when-”_

_“A curse on him, Lancelot, I care not! I- I do not care anymore.”_

_“Don’t lie, Gwyn, I always know.”_

_“Do you want me not?” When Lancelot did not answer he stepped closer, pressing their bodies flush together. With their lips nearly brushing he entreated, “ If you love me as you say you do, as I know you do, then you will love me now until I know that I am yours, until I remember none but you and want no one after you.”_

_“What is honor when everything I am is yours, when you take the breath from my body with merely a glance,” Lancelot whispered, almost as if to himself, cupping Gwyn’s tear stained cheeks. “And yet how can I say yes to such a thing, forsaking my oaths to my king. Yet even then I would. But never would I forsake my oath to you, dear Gwyn, for to love you so would put your life at risk.”_

_“My life,” Gwyn almost laughed for the absurdity of the words. They had no more meaning. “What is my life Lancelot? It is a pit. Above me there are faces, staring down at me, but none can see me. None will reach for me. They kick dirt into my grave. Don’t you too leave me alone in this darkness, for I cannot abide it. I cannot go on knowing that I am to suffer in silence forever denied the happiness granted so easily to others. If you deny me, then perhaps you will preserve my honor, but not my life. If you would preserve me then love me and love me fearlessly. For I love you and loving you is worth a thousand lives.”_

_Lancelot sized his mouth in a kiss, gripping the smaller man by the waist and hoisting him up. Gwyn wrapped his legs around his lover’s body and gloried in a kiss so deep, a love so powerful, it felt as if it could shake the world._

~*~*~*~

Kurt was aware that he didn’t want to wake up, like having to close a book before the end of a good chapter, but still he woke no matter how hard he tried to hang onto the dream. It felt familiar, but his dreams often did even if he did not really remember them upon waking. This time was different though. This time he hung onto the vision of a dimly lit chamber, a man and a woman clasped in a passionate embrace.

God if being in heat meant being subjected to weird hetero sex dreams he was ready to be done with it!

The first sign Kurt had that the heat might actually be abating was waking to the feeling of soreness, he’d been too horny to notice it all the times before so that had to mean something right? He didn’t know what time it was. The shadows were on the opposite side of the room now and he knew the sun was lower in the sky then it had been the last time he’d woken because his wolf just seem to know those kinds of things past noon, not quite evening. The room was hot with summer heat and the air inside just a bit stifling. It smelled so strongly of sex (of _them_ ) that it was frankly a bit obscene but the embarrassment he felt on top of the aches and pains just made him doubly sure that the heat must be waning.

Kurt yawned, wincing at the smarting he felt in his throat and couldn’t help a smile, warmth blooming in his stomach, as he remembered the reason why he currently felt like he’d taken sandpaper to his windpipe.

He turned and looked at Blaine who was splayed out on his back like a child who’d dropped exhausted into sleep with limbs all askew and his smile softened. His curls were as riotous as Kurt had ever seen them and they were pretty wild to begin with. There were several vivid marks on his neck and Kurt knew that there were also several long thin scratches on Blaine’s back to match the ones on his front. He hadn’t had the presence of mind to watch the length of his nails when he’d been dragging them over Blaine’s skin. Maybe he was a sadist because he couldn’t bring himself to be sorry about those marks, even if they must sting after the fact.

Oh well. Blaine was supposed to be a big tough alpha, he grinned to himself as he thought. He could take it.

Blaine continued sleeping soundly beside him, his mind quietly humming in the background of Kurt’s, the pull of his thoughts distant and flowing like a brook as he dreamed. Kurt hadn’t sketched anything in a long time, not since doodling designs in high school, but he wished suddenly that he could sketch Blaine sleeping.

The space between their bodies felt too much, his skin too cold, and Kurt shifted until he was snuggled against Blaine’s side, his cheek pressed warmly against his chest. He lay, riding the swell and fall of Blaine’s breath and thinking absently on the warmth smoldering in his center like embers. He felt it when Blaine began to wake, even though it was not his body that stirred, and he watched Blaine’s hazel eyes blink slowly open. He had never seen a lovelier sight.

“Hey you,” he greeted him quietly. “Good dreams?”

“… yeah,” Kurt’s mouth dipped into a worried frown at the way Blaine had paused before he answered. “I dreamed about a woman” he explained. “I’ve dreamed about her before. Mostly when I was growing up and really needed someone. I used to think she was my guardian angel. I called her my love… mângâiere.”

“You had a crush on a dream woman?” Kurt teased and Blaine flushed.

“In my defense _he_ happens to be a dream man, I just didn’t know it. I dreamed about Queen Guinevere and Lancelot and I recognized Gwyn. He had my guardian’s face. ” 

“Guinevere and Lancelot they…” Kurt began searchingly, wondering if it was possible for them both to have dreamt the same thing.

“They were doing the nasty.” The bald confession shocked a laugh out of Kurt. At least he knew he wasn’t having straight sex dreams like he feared.

“I dreamed about them to.”

“So we shared a dream?”

“Is that weird?” Blaine shrugged in reply.

“Not for mates. It has been known to happen.”

“I suppose that makes sense. I can barely tell where I stop and you begin anymore,” Kurt sighed worrying a corner of the sheet.

“Would you like to?” Blaine asked with a cocked eyebrow and he bit back a grin, shaking his head slowly.

“Not even remotely.”

Blaine smiled sleepily at him in return gazing into Kurt’s eyes like a man might gaze at a night sky, as if all the worlds wonder and mystery were contained within them.

“Like the ocean actually,” Blaine responded to his musings and like the remnants of a dream visions danced in Kurt’s mind: a young boy leaning over a rock surface with wind teasing his hair and ocean spray dusting his cheeks, the same boy clinging to the back of lanky teenager as two other young men chased them through the surf. It immediately invoked memories of his own first trip to the ocean with his parents. He and his dad had built sand castles and his mother had helped him bedazzle it with seashells. Blaine’s eyes went soft as the visions flashed through his mind.

“I only got to see it the one time but I always thought I’d never see anything as fascinating… or as beautiful.” Blaine’s fingertips brushed feather soft against his temple, his gaze never leaving Kurt’s even when he took a shuddering breath and his lashes lowered over his eyes. “And then you looked at me.”

The desire to kiss him was so overwhelming that when they did kiss it was without any finesse; they kissed with the urgency of teenagers all clacking teeth and mushed mouths. It was exhilarating, that low steady warmth in their bellies flaring hotter like embers being fanned to flame.

Kurt, unused to such intense emotions pulled away with a blush. He groaned at himself (at the both of them really) and Blaine chuckled quietly.

“Shut up.” He pinched Blaine’s side and he grinned when Blaine’s laugh went high on a squeal. “You can’t just say something like that. It isn’t fair. I promise I’m not clingy you’re just unfairly huggable sometimes.” Blaine was smart enough not to say anything about the way Kurt was currently wrapped around him like a pretzel.

“I told you it would be intense until the bond settled, for both of us. I don’t want you to let go. I want to lay here and say your name over and over because it feels like the only thing that was ever worth saying.” Humming quietly Kurt pressed their lips together again, softer this time, savoring the taste of Blaine’s mouth and the heat they generated.

“Blaine.” He whispered it with a smile and the name on his breathy sigh was no different than I love you. Kurt knew exactly what Blaine meant by just wanting to say his name over and over, and he wanted him to know it. Blaine smiled in return, whispering Kurt’s name softly as he nuzzled down his cheek and licked gently over his mating mark. Tingles shot straight down to his curls and he curled them, wriggling in Blaine’s embrace as an embarrassed laugh escaped him. He’d never seen Blaine look as happy as he did now, his grin wide and carefree as they nuzzled each other, giggling with ticklishness.

When Kurt nipped at Blaine’s mark he jerked with a gasp and Kurt was pretty sure he could have been accused of preening. The smug smile was wiped off his face however when Blaine grabbed him by the waist and wrestled him onto his back with a playful growl, ignoring Kurt’s breathless laughter and attempts to break free as Blaine wrestled him to submission and straddled his hips.

“Kurt!” His name sounded like everything on Blaine’s tongue as he panted it through his own laughter. “Sometimes I swear I should spank you until you can’t sit.”

“Try it. I may even let you.”

“You’re going to keep me on my toes aren’t you? Never listening to a word I say and making everyone think I’m a terrible alpha who can’t control his mate.”

“Probably,” Kurt shrugged, batting his eyelashes almost coquettishly as he teased. “But you love that about me.” He leaned up to place a smacking kiss against Blaine’s cheek and whispered in his ear, “And I wouldn’t be too bothered about what the others think. None of them saw me on my hands and knees and heard me begging for my alpha’s cock. Isn’t that right, _Alpha_?”

He knew exactly what he was doing, his words like striking a match and tossing it onto smoldering coal; but watching Blaine’s eyes dilate and feeling the spike in arousal that surged through both their bodies was what he wanted. Almost unconsciously Blaine surged toward him, and Kurt met him nearly halfway, drinking in the taste of him and clutching fiercely to him to bring Blaine closer.

When Blaine lifted his hips Kurt wrapped his legs around his torso with a moan and shuddered violently as their groins rubbed together. He could feel himself slick with arousal, thrumming inside with want and he jerked violently in Blaine’s embrace at the strangeness of the sensation, not unfamiliar but off. He could feel Blaine hard, rubbing against him and even as it sent jolts of pleasure through him his stomach twisted with the _wrongness_ of it.

What was so wrong? Why couldn’t he enjoy this? His mind scrambled to make sense of the sensations in his body and his adverse reaction to them and piece by piece memory came to him.

It was wrong because his body had changed in his sleep. He’d lost his safe and familiar sex in favor of this foreign one, this gaping hole in his body that just felt more and more wrong the more he thought about it.

The friction was different, the ache was different (deeper somehow), and it took a moment for Kurt’s desire clouded mind to remember why and when he did everything felt upside down and not quite right. He had a vagina. He had a vagina because his body was ready to procreate, because his biology was demanding that he breed. And that, that just wasn’t _right_.

He was overcome suddenly with vertigo and then the desperate urge to heave. Blaine moved off of him almost as quickly as Kurt pushed. The absence of Blaine’s body over his was both a relief and a torture as Kurt struggled with the bed sheets, frantic to reach the toilet before he released the contents of his churning stomach.

“Kurt?” Blaine’s concerned voice barely reached him over the roaring in his ears as he stumbled towards the bathroom. The door opened with a slam against the wall as Kurt rushed to kneel before the toilet, fighting hyperventilation as he dry heaved. Though his body gave it a valiant effort there was simply nothing in his stomach for him to toss up. Eventually it settled, leaving him feeling drained and his already raw throat feeling freshly abused. 

His heart was thundering as he laid his sweaty brow against the toilet’s porcelain rim, the coolness seeping into his flushed skin. Blaine was in the room and he could feel his distress as keenly as he felt his own. A warm hand settled gently on his quivering back and he flinched. Blaine immediately withdrew and Kurt smarted inside with guilt.

“I’m sorry I… I just need a minute,” he mumbled miserably and even though Blaine didn’t touch him again he felt the warmth of his concern wrapping around him. It was better than a physical touch, because right now Kurt couldn’t stand to be looked at let alone have Blaine touch him. He curled in on himself and fought back the sick shuddery waves of revulsion that assaulted him when his mind flashed back to his body, to the way it was different.

“Don’t be sorry. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.” The gentle assurance helped calm him somewhat, Blaine’s love holding him tightly as Kurt struggled to focus on nothing but it and breathing. When he finally felt like he could speak again he raised his head, gaze fixed determinedly anywhere but down and tried to explain himself so that Blaine wouldn’t think he was a nutcase.

“I feel so gross. And I know that’s silly,” he hastily back tracked because there was a whole population of people who had to live with these parts every day and there wasn’t anything wrong with them and maybe it was extremely rude to want to throw up just because he had to sport them for a few hours. “Allie did warn me, and it’s just body parts but I just…”

“Kurt it’s okay.”

“It doesn’t feel okay,” his voice went sharp as he insisted. “I feel like an alien in my own skin. Nothing feels right and it… I feel disgusting. ”

Blaine lowered himself to sitting beside Kurt until they were eye to eye but thankfully he made no move to touch him.

“I meant it’s okay to feel that way. I’ve been shifting my whole life but I’ve never been through a breeding heat… obviously,” Blaine’s cheeks pinked adorably and Kurt felt a bit like smiling. “So I think even being used to my body changing that it would be really strange not to have male genitalia anymore. I don’t know maybe there’s something psychological about it but I know I’d freak out about it. I’d feel really vulnerable with a vagina. Is that how you feel?”

“Yes! And then some.” Kurt nodded adamantly in agreement finding more of his nerves unwinding with Blaine’s calming presence and his startlingly keen insight. “God it’s not like I needed any help making people think I’m a woman. Now there’s this.”

“Kurt, you’re not-”

“I know, I know, I’m not a woman just because I look like a freak. Shit, I just… I don’t like it. It’s ugly.”

“You feel ugly.” It was a statement not a question but Kurt answered it anyway with a short nod.

“Did you want it?” The question caught Blaine so off guard Kurt could feel his shock zinging over the bond and he rushed to clarify. “When we had sex, did you even want it? I know the heat made it impossible to say no so I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.”

“Kurt look at me,” he could tell that Blaine was dying to reach for him but Kurt was glad he didn’t so he did his best to meet his eyes even though his whole body was awash with mortification. He kept himself tightly curled, his lower body completely shielded. Blaine’s gaze was earnest as it searched his, his heart openly aching over the bond they shared. “You’re beautiful .There isn’t a form you could take or a way that you could look that would make me want you any less. Okay?”

“Blaine I have a vagina,” he insisted. They were pretty, the things that Blaine was saying, but Kurt just couldn’t bring himself to believe the words when he couldn’t find any sort of desire within himself to have sex with a female. That was the whole point of being gay wasn’t it? “You can’t tell me you find this desirable. How can you?”

“Because I find _you_ desirable, Kurt, not just your dick. All I know is that what we did back there was the absolute best sex I’ve ever had in my life, vagina or no. And I think it was because it was with you. That’s all that matters to me, being with you. I don’t care how you look. Allie told you it was only temporary?” He questioned when it was obvious that Kurt still couldn’t believe him. “When your cycle runs its course you’ll bleed and your body will go back to normal.”

Intense panic punched through Kurt’s chest at the word cycle as he remembered everything Allie had taught him about a breeding heat, about the purpose behind his body’s change. It was all so that he could get pregnant and fuck he so wasn’t ready for that. He wanted to run right for the door, as if the fact that even now his body could have betrayed him was something he could run from. He could have been _fertilized_ , like something out of science fiction.

He would become a freak of nature, something for people to point and stare at and revile just like they’d done in high school only this time he’d deserve it because he was so so wrong. Oh god there could be something _growing_ inside of him right now and no, it didn’t help to think of it as a person, not at all. It made it ten times worse because how the hell was he supposed to deal with the thought of carrying around another person in his body like that was a small thing? Like that didn’t make this whole thing seem like a sentence he couldn’t get out of when he hadn’t asked for it- except he had. Over and over again if memory served, but that hadn’t really been _him_ talking.

He didn’t realize how tightly he was smothering his own choked sobs until his lungs were burning for air and Blaine’s arms were around him, framing his shaking body.

“Kurt… please don’t cry, don’t Love, please don’t.” He wanted to respond to the plea in Blaine’s voice, to the helplessness he felt sucking at Blaine’s bright undaunted core but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He was just scared. He hadn’t been this scared since… well since the night he’d thought he’d turned into a monster and killed a woman. Blaine held him and he clung tightly gasping through his tears.

“I’m s-sorry, I really thought I c-could handle this” he felt so ashamed, so ridiculously guilty, because he knew how much Blaine wanted this, _needed_ it even, and when push came to shove he was just crumpling beneath the pressure. Maybe Flint and the others had been right to worry after all.

“Stop it!” Blaine demanded roughly, shaking him just the tiniest bit. “Stop beating yourself up. You need time. How could you go your whole life thinking you could never bear children and expect to just be fine with it on a dime? Baby I’ll give you all the time in the world, okay? We won’t do anything until you’re comfortable with it. We’ll plan better for your next heat and I promise you don’t have to have cubs if you don’t want to.”

“You can’t promise that… can you? Blaine you need heirs.”

“I do, but Kurt you don’t have to be the one to bear them. I want you to be…. But I want you to be comfortable more. I don’t want you tortured just because I need this. We could find a surrogate…” Kurt frowned. Quinn had told him lycans didn’t like medicine. Where was Blaine going to find a surrogate? “It’ll be hard on both of us, but maybe it’ll be easier on you than being pregnant?”

A violent urge to snap his teeth overcame him as the words processed and his mind conjured up images of Blaine with someone else. Considering that getting the pack to see their resident doctor was like pulling teeth he had a pretty good idea what Blaine meant by finding a surrogate. Blaine would have to get someone else pregnant and…

Kurt couldn’t even finish the thought. One minute he was shaking in Blaine’s arms the next he had the alpha flat on his back, a hair raising growl rumbling out of his throat as he glared down at him, clutching him tightly with extended claws. He was drawing blood but he didn’t care. All he cared about was covering Blaine in his scent, biting possessively just above his mark and feeling Blaine’s body respond to his because it belonged to him. _No one else!_

“Mine,” he insisted nipping at the soft skin of Blaine’s throat in warning. He could see the bright dangerous blue of his eyes in the reflection of Blaine’s.

“Yeah, okay, stupid idea.” Blaine acquiesced. “I’m yours Kurt. All yours.”

The wolf eased some by his agreement Kurt rewarded (or perhaps tortured) him with two soft lingering licks over his mark, and then a soft kiss with just the slightest bit of suction. Blaine groaned and arched beneath him and satisfaction bloomed warmly in Kurt’s chest.

“A very stupid idea” he scolded.

“We all have our moments,” Blaine looked so sheepish that any lingering anger he felt eased. He even almost felt bad for going feral on him.

“I cracked your head against the floor,” he remembered and there was only a tiny bit of guilt.

“Yeah you did.”

“Sorry.”

“No you’re not,” the accusation held little sting accompanied with Blaine’s soft chuckle and slowly Kurt smiled. It felt wonderful to smile again, even over something so trivial, but it was tremulous.

“Blaine, what if… what if I’m already…?” When he couldn’t finish Blaine raised himself up on his elbows to bring their faces closer.

“It’s going to be alright,” he promised simply, quietly. “We’ll go slowly. I’m going to be here with you every step of the way.”

Maybe it was silly, but Kurt was finding that one of the best things about finding his mate was how the simple truth of those words made him feel like he could face anything in the world. Sensing his acquiescence Blaine rubbed his arm gently, his smile encouraging as he asked, “how about a bath? I feel like a train hit me so I know you’ve got to be sore. We’ll handle it if it comes Kurt. Until then we’ll just enjoy being together however you want to, okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed. When he leaned down and brushed his lips against Blaine’s they both understood it as ‘thank you’.

~*~*~

Nick was shutting him out but Jeff had expected that. He had gone to the café first, only to be told that Lina wasn’t there. Mrs. Lynch had seemed surprised to see him so early in the morning, knowing all too well that he was supposed to be at breakfast with the guard. He hadn’t stuck around to further rouse her suspicions but on his way out that human woman the Lynches had hired pulled him aside to give him a letter.

“Something weird happened earlier this morning.” She’d told him. “This guy came in and he just seemed kind of desperate, you know? Lycan, and definitely a stray so I figured he was on the run from something and he’d come here for sanctuary but he left before the Lynches got in. He left this and it kind of scared me. Maybe you could tell someone up there? I know it’s probably nothing to worry about but you never know.”

She’d handed Jeff a chilling note scribbled in an unfamiliar hand on a napkin. _I think I’m under a spell._ The words had screamed at him from the cloth and his heart had started to race. He knew it wasn’t nothing. It couldn’t be coincidence that the MacTere were going to try and kill Lina on the same day that a stray with two siblings and an unspoken invitation into the forest came to town acting bewitched. The world just wasn’t that random. He had no idea what all this was about but he knew that the MacTere were involved.

He’d waited gone and waited in town, crouched in some bushes across the street from the house, for some sign of Nick for hours to no avail. The house that Sebastian and the other strays were renting was eerily silent with none of its usual comings and goings. There was a strange aura that seemed to hover over the place and an even stranger scent permuting the street. It was too light at first for Jeff to pinpoint the source. Even with his superior nose he didn’t figure out what it was until well into the afternoon. The sour sweet notes seemed to get heavier as time wore on and it was only when the sun was bearing down on him that he finally recognized it as decay. 

Something had died in the house.

Jeff swallowed thickly, his snout twitching as he climbed swiftly to his feet. He darted out of his hiding spot , a big sandy blur to any curious eye that happened to look out of the window of a neighboring house, and loped across the street. He kept a wary eye on all of the windows of the house. It appeared empty and nobody had come back all day but it was possible that there was someone inside that he just hadn’t been able to smell.

It was also possible that there was a body left inside to stink as the afternoon heat sweltered around them and that it was Nick, killed in some scuffle that his frantic mind could imagine all too easily, and that was the reason why Jeff had to risk getting closer. He couldn’t be rid of the insidious thought that maybe Nick wasn’t shutting him out. Maybe the bond had gone cold because he was dead.

The smell was easy to track and puzzlingly it didn’t lead him inside but around the back of the house and under the porch. It was a tight squeeze and he hesitated for a moment, for there was only one way in or out, but he had to know. There was no turning back without knowing.

It was dark but his eyes were well suited to darkness. It was much cooler below the planks of the porch but nowhere near cool enough to keep a body and the smell was almost overpowering now. He saw immediately where a shallow grave had been dug, with paws if the prints in the dirt were anything to go by. Jeff’s heart began to thunder as his nose clouded with the scent of dirt, rotting wood, rotting flesh and other more recognizable scents. Two adult wolves, males, one of them Nick.

 _‘No no come on please, please, no’_ Jeff surged forward with a whine, franticly digging up the grave, terrified of what he might find. What he found was a body so shredded it was beyond hope of identification. It was slighter than Nick he thought but it was too hard to tell for sure when he’d been so torn up. Whimpering Jeff nuzzled the body with his snout as he dug more of it up, heart thundering loudly in his chest as he dug the torso free of dirt. That was when he saw it. Though it was bloodied and dirt covered a portion of it still glinted in the slivers of sunlight shining through the porch flanks. It was a tiny silver whistle. Like the kind the omegas wore.

Those tatters of blue cloth, that was the omega uniform he realized as he put together that the body did not in fact belong to Nick but some poor omega apprentice.

At first all Jeff could do was slump to the ground he was so overcome with relief, but quickly the emotion was followed by shame and then swiftly by fury because the body meant that the strays had killed one of the students under his Alpha’s protection.

 _“Jeff,”_ Nick’s thoughts sliding into his mind opened up the bond between them and suddenly Nick was there, bright and warm and alive. The omega, whoever he was, was not and it was because of the MacTere. _“I know you can hear me. You’ve got to leave. I know you’re at the house and if you’re discovered there-”_

 _“Fuck you!_ ” Jeff cursed him viciously, unable to stop the horrible sinking feeling he had that the omega’s death was all his fault. He’d known all along that Nick could get into the forest undetected and he hadn’t told Blaine. He’d known that it was the MacTere who had vandalized Lina’s house and he’d covered for them, all so that Nick could survive, so that he could have a chance at a different life if he wanted it. A life with him. This boy had paid the price for it and soon Lina might too.

_“Jeff it’s not what you think.”_

_“Don’t lie to me, you asshole. I know Sebastian and the others can’t walk in the forest anymore!”_

_“I don’t know where he was killed Jeff! And it doesn’t matter because I didn’t kill him. You’ve got to believe me.”_

Believe him? Why the hell should he do that?! One of the pack had died because he’d put too much belief in Nick.

_“Fuck you fuck you fuck you! You’ve taken every chance I’ve given you and thrown it back in my face so don’t you dare ask me to fucking trust you now just so you can destroy everything I care about!”_

_“Jeff listen-”_

_“You used me! You’re a liar and believed you. I believed you-”_ Jeff thrashed, overcome with the need to attack someone who wasn’t there, letting out a pitiful whine as he found it difficult to maneuver in the confined space.

_“We don’t have time for this! Sebastian is nothing compared to what’s coming for you. I’m trying to save you whether you believe in me or not! Do you want to die?!”_

At that moment, Jeff wasn’t really sure. He wasn’t in his man shape but that didn’t mean his spirit couldn’t wail. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so terrible. Then again he’d never gotten anyone killed either. Maybe part of him didn’t care whether he died anymore, maybe he felt like it would be justice, but he knew that he couldn’t curl into a ball and give up or more people would die. He still had to save his pack and that was all that mattered. He had to do that at least.

“If you really want to save me then you’ll help me save my pack, understand me? Their fate is my fate. So start talking. Tell me what Sebastian plans to do.”

“It’s not Sebastian you have to worry about.”

~*~*~*~

The trouble with not wanting Blaine to touch him was that even waning the heat insisted on having its way. That soothing warmth in his gut slowly became more, so that halfway through the bath Kurt realized the itching he felt wasn’t about dry or irritated skin, it was about the way that Blaine’s hands sliding over his soapy skin drove him crazy. Once stoked the fire in his belly burned just as hot as it had before, his need for Blaine so stark it superseded everything else. It made him very afraid because he was lucid enough now that he couldn’t ignore how uncomfortable his body made him, or the dangerous consequences of continuing to couple together, but he couldn’t say no either or else he felt like he’d combust.

“Blaine?” When Kurt said his name like help, Blaine swept him up in the middle of a plundering kiss. Water sloshed over the tub and cascaded down their tangled limbs. The squish and slap of their wet flesh coming together was loud in Blaine’s ears but louder still was the pounding of Kurt’s heart driven by an insidious fear that even the passion building between them could not dispel.

He carried Kurt to the bed, whispering soft endearments as he laid him down on the cotton sheets. He couldn’t make everything okay with a wave of his hand, as much as he wanted to. Kurt simply needed time before he could see the changes in his body as something normal, something beautiful, and until then Blaine was determined to do his best to show him that _he_ at the very least, loved every bit of him and didn’t need a single thing more from him than he was able to give right now.

He nuzzled his nose against the column of Kurt’s neck, gently against his mark, and Kurt took a shivering breath, the movement of his ribcage pushing against Blaine’s chest as he covered Kurt’s body with his. Kurt splayed his hand across Blaine’s shoulders rubbing up and down, enthralled by the simple contact. It was overwhelming how intense their bond felt. It ran deeper than anything Blaine had ever felt before, a dangerous amount of deep but he wouldn’t have traded it for anything else.

Kurt’s body shuddered against his, as if a sudden chill had gone down his spine and Blaine felt the demands of the heat roiling through him, felt the answering demands of his own body. He pushed them violently down, keeping an iron fist on his control.

“Shhh,” he soothed, wrapping Kurt up tightly in his arms. It would be a kind of torture for them both waiting out the rest of the heat but he could make it as comfortable for Kurt as he could. They lay quietly, stroking each other’s bodies and trading slow soft kisses when Kurt wasn’t in too much pain. Sometimes the waves came on him so strong all he could do was squeeze his eyes shut and writhe. During those moments he would beg and everything in Blaine would pull tight until even breathing felt like a struggle. The wolf writhed under Blaine’s skin, contemptuous of the cage he kept it in and he felt like his bones would snap beneath the building pressure. He could feel Kurt’s wolf close, caged behind Kurt’s fear and his will to keep it suppressed. This was something the animal did not understand, but they were both of them more than the wolf and this was something they had chosen to suffer together.

Kurt’s brow was soaked with sweat again when the last wave finally broke; leaving him limp and gasping for every shallow breath he could manage. For a time Blaine could not speak, his jaw clenched too tight, his body rocked with shudders of pain as he waited out the last of it. Painful as it had been resisting he knew it was nothing to what Kurt had suffered being in need and not receiving. It was awful seeing him that way, awful to think that if not for him Kurt would not have had to go through it.

 _‘I’m sorry.’_ He didn’t have to say it for Kurt to know it.

“I’m not,” he managed to mumble through his exhaustion. Blaine could see his eyes already drooping closed. Blaine rubbed his back, easing him into sleep and Kurt went, but not before mumbling against his skin, “Love you… won’t let you down.”

~*~*~*~

Finn had never wanted to get shot. He didn’t know anyone that really did, but there were always those guys who talked big in the call of duty chat room who thought that they could take it when the time came. Right now he’d have gladly switched places with any one of them because being shot was by far the worst he’d ever felt. He was grateful that his mother was there, and guilty as well, because the last place a guy wanted his mother to be was in a van full of guys with guns.

She was trying to keep it together, doing her best to stem the flow of blood from his side and tell him that everything was going to be okay but Finn could tell that she was barely keeping it together. He knew the feeling. He kept himself sitting up, assuring her that Puck and Burt would find them because he didn’t want her to be as scared as he was. Neither of them knew what to do. It had been shock enough when Burt had called them with the news that he’d found Kurt living with werewolves and there was a psycho vampire after them all. Nobody had said anything about the police.

Carole had answered the door that morning when they’d seen it was two men in uniform. It hadn’t even occurred to them not to trust the police. What if it had been about Burt and Puck? It had all happened so quickly after that. His mom had screamed his name and he’d come running down the stairs. He’d tackled one of the guys and they’d fallen. The gun had gone off. Mom had screamed.

They’d been driving for what felt like eons, but what was probably more like an hour. Finn was too exhausted to keep track of the time. Mom kept trying to get their captors to stop. There were three of them, two men and a wiry looking female with short spiky blond hair in a tank top and a pair of board shorts that Finn had thought was a man up until about a second ago when one of her companions called her a bitch.

“Sire will be upset if we don’t take them straight there. He said no stops.” One of the cops was saying. The woman gritted her teeth and attempted to switch lanes only to swerve back to avoid an oncoming truck. The movement jostled Finn and he hissed as pain speared through his side. His mother was there a second later, propping him up.

She glared at their abductors like she used to when he missed curfew.

“Be careful, he’s hurt!”

“Lady, I don’t give a fuck!” The spiky haired blond turned to curse at them before turning back to the two guys with guns. “And Sire can go fuck himself too because we’re stopping. We’ve got a gas leak and it’s hot as hell in here. I’m not looking to blow up are you?”

“Sire said no stops.” The guy insisted woodenly and Finn held himself tighter. There was just something not right about the two cops. They were like those robot people from the movies, or aliens pretending to be human.

“I heard you the first time Pinocchio,” the blond grumbled and she turned and shared an eye roll with them, as if she Finn and Carole were in on some joke. “God I can’t stand thralls. How Jesse got mixed up with vampires is beyond me.”

“Sire said no names,” cop number two grunted and the woman barked a laugh.

“We’re going to kill them anyway. Who the fuck are they gonna tell?” Finn stopped breathing and his mom made a wounded sound before she could slap her hands over her mouth and hold it in. He’d known it wasn’t good being shot up and carried away by three strangers but hearing it said made it real.

He reached for his mother’s hand and gripped it tightly. They couldn’t count on Burt finding them anymore. He had to find a way to get them out of this. He just had no idea how.

~**~

 _“Kurt… Alpha?”_ When Lina’s thoughts brushing against his mind followed a tentative knock on the door Kurt stirred, blinking his eyes open tiredly as Blaine rolled over and stared at the door.

“I knew we wouldn’t have a lot of time but I thought they’d at least give us the whole day,” he mused tiredly to himself. Kurt could feel something like distress coming from Lina over their link and he frowned.

“Something is wrong.” Nodding silently in agreement Blaine rose from the bed, extending out a hand for Kurt to help him rise. Though the both of them wished they could have had more time to settle into their bond, to work through the issues still standing in the way of their future they knew that they were needed. Well, Blaine was needed anyway, Kurt was probably expendable in many of their eyes.

 _“No you’re not.”_ Blaine chided. _“There’s a reason everyone’s so nervous about who I’d mate with you know. You have no idea how much you have to give, how much you’ll have to. You’re going to look back on this time and wish you could go back.”_

Blaine looked him over carefully and out loud asked him if he was okay, if he didn’t need more time after their ordeal with the last wave of heat and Kurt shook his head.

“I’m fine. Get some food in me and I’ll be good as new.” It wasn’t completely honest but he wouldn’t feel right sleeping while Blaine went out to face the world and Blaine sensed correctly that he wouldn’t’ be swayed.

Blaine took his hand and instantly Kurt felt more at ease as they walked to the door to Lina waiting on the other end. She was tense and obviously wary taking a step back when the door opened and only relaxing when Kurt flashed a reassuring grin.

“We wondered how long the heat would linger,” she sighed. Her relief was so palpable he could practically smell it. “First heats are shorter but no one could be sure with the mating claim on top of it.”

“I think being with Blaine actually helped more,” Kurt reassured her and her lips turned up into a small smile but it did not reach her eyes. “Never mind that though, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s gone wrong with the burial has it?” Blaine asked and Lina immediately shook her head.

“No, Adam has done well making sure that everything is prepared for that.”

“And the rogue that attacked the Evan’s boy?” Blaine asked and before Kurt could even ask what on earth he was talking about the memories were there in Blaine’s mind for him to unlock: Wes coming to the door to tell him about the attacks, finding Blaine almost driven feral by the onset of the heat. Kurt squeezed his hand gratefully.

“Vanished, gone for good we hope,” Lina replied and Blaine’s relief washed through him. Lina however was still leaden with dread.

“Then what is it?” He asked, some sixth sense warning him that he wasn’t going to like at all what she had to say. Strangely her eyes flicked to Blaine and the two stared furiously at each other in a seemingly silent battle of wills. Only Kurt knew it wasn’t silent. Blaine was shutting him out but even behind the numbness that left in his mind he could feel the buzzing of Blaine’s thoughts and emotions.

Why would Blaine try to block him out now? To say it hurt was an understatement. With the bond so fresh and only gaining strength by the hour to have Blaine push him out now was like being jabbed in the chest with an icicle. What was he hiding?

The entire exchange was only seconds but it felt like eons to Kurt’s starved spirit as it ached for their connection.

Lina snapped her eyes away from Blaine with a defiant tilt to her head and said through gritted teeth, “Jeff has returned. He refuses to tell no one where he has been except Blaine. He says we’re all in danger.”

She lowered her eyes when she was finished and the sinking feeling in Kurt’s stomach grew heavier. He had a feeling he knew why Jeff thought the pack was in danger and why Lina was so afraid. He had meant to talk to Blaine before it could be discovered who she was and the rest of the pack could get involved.

It looked like their time might be up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First Off I want to thank each and every one of you for your kind reviews. I'm a bit behind in my responses to people on here tumblr and LJ but I want you to know how much I appreciate all of you.  
> And on to the teaser:  
> James and Jesse have Kurt’s family, that can’t be good. Jeff and Lina are in a lot of trouble but so is Blaine because Blaine’s been keeping the vampire a secret from Kurt and maybe that’s not the only one. All of their enemies seem to think he and Lina have been lying to everybody about her mate dying before she showed up all preggers- so it’s cool to kill him without getting cursed. Kurt doesn’t seem cool with Blaine having cubs with somebody else so he’s bound to be pissed. Pretty sure Kurt’s just going to be pissed with Blaine no matter what but the level of pissed depends heavily on the truth behind one thing. See you next time in Chapert 26: Benito


	28. Chapter 26: Lina

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> INDIVIDUAL CHAPTER WARNING: This chapter includes descriptions of an abusive relationship and is not intended to rationalized or depicted as healthy, stable, or loving (AKA don't try this at home. Please don't). It also includes descriptions of non-con and domestic violence. Please read with care. If you'd like any more information before reading please message me.
> 
> A/N: So some of you especially if you're on tumblr may have noticed the name change for this chapter. Relax, I promise by the end you'll know who Benito's father is. I name these chapter in advance, and after writing this one it was very clear to me that the title was wrong. This belongs to Lina.
> 
> Word's in Italian :  
> Stella-Lina: Star Lina (a pet name).  
> Sapienza: short for The Sapienza University of Rome  
> Mi amato: My beloved.

_This is the tale of the day a Romani tribe came to Camelot. Throughout the seven lands the Romani were feared. Their tribes were little more than devil worshiping pagans and it was known that many of them drank the blood of the living as part of their heathen rituals, though they were careful to hide the evidence of their wicked nature._

_In every village they passed through they left behind them a shroud of death but the bodies of the missing were rarely found. The people cried out to their kings for protection and none more than Arthur the High king. They looked to Camelot as a beacon of hope for Arthur protected it and its people with an iron fist. None of the vampir had ever dared set foot in his halls._

_So the day the Romani had come was unprecedented and the fear they inspired trickled through the people like a cold spring. Their chief had requested an audience with Arthur and it had been granted, though none knew what the king could be thinking inviting the Romani within his castle. His knight’s protested it and his queen alongside them but Merlin’s daughter, the enchantress Morgana, had run off with a Romani band and Arthur hoped this tribe might have news of her. Indeed they did._

_Though he had known that Morgana had set out in search of the Romani tribes of the east to beg for the secret of their dark powers, Arthur had hoped her mission to be in vain. But as Arthur learned that day it was a false hope. Morgana had found refuge in the Sarpe family, their chief admited to having been enthralled by her beauty and her magic. In the hope of claiming her for his bride he had exchanged the secrets of his family for her blood. Arthur mourned, for he feared that the woman he loved had traded her soul to the devil for the chance to hurt him and that he could only blame on himself._

_The chief looked to the king that day and it was said that the red fires of hell had danced within his eyes as he’d warned Arthur that there was a magic far older and stronger than that of wizards, that there were things that even the Merlin knew to fear._

_“The vampir live in the shadows but we do not touch them. When one of our own grows too thirsty he is beheaded before he can see the face of Erlik, for to be touched by the dark one is to become a slave to ones darkest self. I did not see Morgana’s true aim until it was too late.” The Romani chief looked to the Merlin then, his smile gleaming as the torchlight glistened off his fangs. “The daughter of the great one is consumed by a lust for vengeance that even the best teaching cannot dissuade. Pray she is never granted the power of Erlik.”_

_“I do not fear the vampir or your demon god,” Arthur bravely said and the people were heartened by his courage. “Nor do I trust my enemies out of hand when they bring me lies. You tarnish a good woman’s name! For what aim?”_

_“I did not come to warn you of Morgana but of yourself, for the heart can be treacherous.” It was then that the Romani chief had prophesied that one who was touched by Erlik, the dark one, would be his undoing and that a great darkness would overcome the world. Men would be slaughtered like cattle, their people driven to the brink of extinction._

_The rivers would run red with blood._

_“This darkness will start with you and so it can only end with you.” The chief had looked to the Merlin and so too had Arthur. He saw no fear on his counselors face and thus he sent the Romani away, warning them never to return to Camelot. Peace returned to the kingdom and for a time the people forgot the dark warnings brought to them that day._

_The Queen never did._

_When Morgana returned to Camelot it looked even more as if the Romani were liars for she was a changed woman in every good way, but Gwyn had not forgotten the words of the Romani chief and he begged Arthur to be wary of her, for strange things had begun to occur in the villages: dark mysteries without explanation that the common folk blamed on sprites and other fiends. Arthur promised to be vigilant, but the heart, as the chief had warned him, is traitorous. Arthur lay with his love only once but once was all it took._

~*~*~

Mike’s family owned a house just outside of Columbus in the town of Dublin. It was secluded away from the rest of the town, tucked up against the river and surrounded by trees. To Tina the massive New England style country house with its sweeping stone exterior looked like something dropped out of a story book. Kurt would have loved it, but it was hard for Tina to enjoy it with so much weighing on her mind. The Chang house was just one of the many hubs in Balaur’s coven, but it was the first one that Tina had ever been to that intimidated her quite like this. Michael’s father was a powerful master in his own right and highly ranked within the coven and every stone in the Chang household seemed to resonate with a powerful aura that made her feel small and unusually meek.

She didn’t bother asking herself how she’d gotten there because that was obvious. She’d met someone, they’d shared a moment, and against both their better judgment they’d continued seeing each other until it felt like love. She’d thought that it didn’t matter what Mike’s secrets were, if he turned out to be subhuman like she’d suspected after certain pieces of his mystery had begun to slide together. She’d thought she could handle being a vampire’s girlfriend.

Now her best friend’s life was in danger and the one woman who could destroy any argument against him was missing and might be dead. She couldn’t do anything about either of those things except wait; that and let Mike dress her up and parade her around his parents mansion apparently.

She hadn’t wanted to attend the gathering that night but Mike wouldn’t let her leave his side, especially not to look for Brittany (they’d argued about it intensely). The gathering was in preparation for all of those who would be traveling to Westerville in two days on Balaur’s behalf. Which meant Mike and his parents would pretty much be wrapped up in meetings for the next two days and since Mike was letting her go nowhere without him she pretty much didn’t have a choice.

The hall was crowded with the masters who would be attending the conclave and their families, along with the expected trail of thralls thrown in the mix. Apparently vampires didn’t go anywhere without an entire retinue of willing blood supplies. Tina was dressed the part in a form fitting dress that revealed far more of her cleavage than she ever would have chosen to on her own. The only thing that kept her from feeling like a walking buffet was Mike’s collar clasped tightly around her throat, a clear warning to any hungry eyes that she was claimed and not available for sampling. The Chang’s staff was not quite so conservatively garbed. Each of them down to the last man and woman was dressed provocatively with bare chests, spilling breasts, and oiled necks gleaming with obvious purpose. She found the whole thing highly unsettling.

“I think it’s a waste of our time personally. I hardly know what Balaur is playing at anymore sending us to the dogs when we all know nothing will come of it. Do you suppose we’re being punished?” A vampiress Tina could not remember the name of said as she sniffed into her wine glass. The thick red contents sloshed within the confines of the glass, drawing Tina’s stare. She still couldn’t believe how weird it was knowing that someone in front of her was holding a glass full of blood.

“I don’t know, Ri,” Michael’s father replied with a clipped tone. “Do you want to be the one that questions him?”

“Maybe I shall,” YuRi, whose name Tina finally remembered, replied coolly just as Michael’s mother Julia came sauntering up and did that creepy thing vampires did with their teeth where there lips curled and the tips of their fangs poked out in the imitation of a smile.

“Now you’ll have your chance Ri, Aurel and his entourage have finally arrived.” The name rippled over the hall as voices lowered and heads turned towards the doors leading to the front of the house, the anticipation and the fear it sparked in those gathered hanging heavy over the room like a fog. Tina shivered and jumped when she felt a cool hand touch her skin.

“It’s just me,” Michael whispered in her ear, giving her arm an encouraging squeeze and Tina did her best to muster a smile. What did you do when you loved someone to distraction but hated their family? Michael’s mother treated her like she was one of the staff and she might as well be furniture to his father. That wasn’t even touching the fact that everyone acted like this was some sort of vamped out version of the Sopranos.

Balaur’s son Aurel looked exactly as she’d expect a vampire to look. Tall, tastefully muscled, impeccably dressed with a questionably pale complexion and an unmistakable aura of danger. Aurel had no Bride but he had a trail of gorgeous young men and women behind him, all of them similarly dressed to the other thralls in the hall and sporting simple but ornate brass collars. There was another vampire with him and he was unlike any other vampire in the hall, truly unlike any vampire Tina had ever seen before.

Where Aurel looked like he was channeling Interview With A Vampire this guy looked like he’d stepped right out of East Of Eden, with a full head of dark hair that looked permanently wind tossed and a suit that didn’t fit quite right and yet he managed to somehow make look effortless. His chiseled features were ruddy and his eyes sparkled a brilliant blue. Everything about him oozed life and vitality where vampires loved to come off as shadowed and cool as glass. Despite herself, Tina found herself fascinated, watching his every movement as he and Aurel swept into the room.

“James,” Michael hissed under his breath and as similar shock rippled through the others around them Tina looked from her boyfriend to the heinously gorgeous vampire making his way towards them.

“You know him?” She asked and Mike nodded shortly, his eyes never leaving the strange vampire.

“James Dean.”

“Are you serious?” Tina cocked an eyebrow unable to believe that was actually the guy’s name. “I was just thinking he had an East Of Eden vibe.”

“Probably intentional,” Mike scoffed. Whispering under his breath he informed her, “The guy’s obsessed with old movies. At least he used to be. I haven’t seen him since I was a kid.”

“Who is he?” She asked, because he was somebody, that was evident by the way everybody was reacting. Not in the usual way, vampires weren’t big on emotional displays, but standing up straighter, showing more fang.

“That’s kind of hard to explain, since no one really knows. Balaur found him wandering when he was fourteen, still a fledgling. No one knows what happened to his Sire or what coven he originated from just that he is not one of the born vampir. Whoever converted him was reckless, leaving him alone to face the worst of the transition and either starve to death or go mad with blood lust. I was only six years old myself at the time, but I remember that he was strange. He was always reluctant to feed but he had an appetite for it he could not quite resist. Once he got started he was relentless always a bad sign, but Balaur was fascinated with him. He was always allowed to do things none of the rest of us could get away with.”

Michael said it with such contempt that Tina shivered, scooting closer as her eyes flicked to James and Aurel who had almost reached their group.

“Such as?” She whispered under her breath, almost not wanting to know.

“We’re not allowed to sire any fledglings until we become masters. Many of us don’t even have the power until then, but James was always ahead of the rest of us and he was obsessed with finding his Bride. But there’s a reason they make us wait. Fledglings are hard to control and making a Bride on top of things is an extremely delicate conversion. James was always too thirsty for more power and more blood, as quick as he could swallow it. He didn’t create vampires, Tina, he created monsters and the coven had to run along behind him destroying them before they could wreak havoc on the city and stir the humans to wrath. My father finally confronted him and he promised that would be the end of it.”

“Let me guess, it wasn’t?”

Mike shook his head before he murmured, “No. He hid it well but he sired two others, two girls. One escaped him, only to be killed by the Westerville Guard when she traveled too close to their territory. Father and the rest of the coven hunted him to put a stop to it be he converted one other before he was reputably killed in a shootout with human police.”

As Aurel and his companion halted before Mike and his parents it finally clicked into place. Brittany. She was looking at Brittany’s sire.

“James. This is a surprise.” Julia Chang was the first in Michael’s party to regain the power of speech. She extended a pale hand towards him and the enigmatic male swept it up with a broad grin and laid a smacking kiss on the back of her palm. “You look well for a dead man.”

“But don’t we all?” He replied with a saucy wink in Tina’s direction and she winced as Mike’s grip tightened on her arm. “Mikey, long time no see! Look at you all grown up and making thralls. And isn’t she something. What’s your name beautiful?”

“Why is _he_ here?” Mike demanded of Aurel and the blond vampire gave him a bored look.

“James? Father requested his presence at the conclave.”

“He’s supposed to be dead!” Mike insisted and Tina did not like the dangerous way that the blond vampire male was looking at him. “Did Balaur forget that the last time any of us saw this guy alive we were hunting him down like a criminal for what he did to Britt?”

“Michael!” Michael’s sire snapped at him. Beside her Mike went still, smarting under his father’s glare. Michael Chang senior turned to Aurel and said, “It is peculiar Aurel you must admit. Why did Balaur not inform me that he was alive?”

“Is my father required to report to you now Michael?” Aurel asked with a curious tone that Tina didn’t buy for a second. “He always regarded our dear James as something of a son. Imagine his joy to discover that he lived. Surely in light of his miraculous return to us his youthful indiscretions can be forgiven?”

“I hope, Master Chang, that we can put the past behind us?” James asked with what sounded like sincere hope. “And I’d like to apologize to Brittany if I may? I was astounded to learn that she’s still alive and part of your household. I was young and arrogant when I sired her. I live with that regret every day and it would mean a lot if I could see her and apologize.”

Though James looked the picture of sincerity, for some reason Aurel looked annoyed by his words. At least Tina thought he did. The emotion flashed so quickly that it was hard to tell if she’d actually seen it.

“That won’t be possible I’m afraid. We’ll discuss it later.” Aurel laid a brotherly hand on James neck but there was nothing warm in the motion. “But you see my friends, what better authority than our dear James to speak on loving a mad creation? My father is hoping he can make Anderson see sense and realize his new friend Mr. Hummel must be properly dealt with. It is our hope that all of this can be peacefully resolved.”

The others made noises of agreement, all of them clapping quietly and murmuring amongst themselves. Tina was no vampire expert but she was calling bullshit.

~*~*~

_Morgana swept in like a dark cloud, enthralling the castle guard as if they were naught but puppets to be yanked about on strings and made to lead her to her destination. Arthur was out with the knights of the circle but it was not Arthur that she sought that day. It was his queen._

_“What have you done!” the woman screeched as she thrust open the doors of the king’s chambers and strode through them. She was brought up short by the appearance of a short thin blade against the vulnerable line of her throat. She had expected to find Arthur’s reputably frail bride cowering in her rooms at the sound of approaching danger but instead Morgana was met with the kiss of a dagger as Guinevere emerged from where the thick wooden doors had concealed her. Morgana went still, seething with fury. Never had she hated anyone so much as she hated the Queen of Camelot._

_The feeling was very much mutual; Gwyn was not so fond of the Merlin’s daughter._

_“I have had your tribe banished, dear lady, and not killed.” Gwyn answered the witch trembling beneath his blade with a sneer. “Only for the sake of my dear husband who regrettably would mourn your passing; but if you take another step without my leave I shall end your wretched life and Arthur’s mourning of you will be his own affair.”_

_The sound of running footsteps and shouts was followed by the appearance of several of the circle, the only knights it appeared that Morgana had not been able to spell, for they like Arthur and Gwyn were of the wolf spirit. Lancelot was among them, his face tight with fury as he rushed to Gwyn’s aide, his eyes bright with the hunger of the wolf. Sir Kay was wise enough to hold him tightly by the arm as Tristan and Gawain took hold of Morgana, who hissed like a spitting cat flashing her wicked fangs at them as they locked her in irons._

_“To the dungeon Your Grace?” Sir Tristan asked and Gwyn shook his head._

_“Escort this wretch to the edge of the forest and see that she leaves our land.”_

_“It is Arthur’s land!” Morgana attempted to lunge at Gwyn but the chains forced her to halt. He heard an animal growl rumble from Lancelot and their eyes met over the witch woman’s head._

_“Easy love,” he thought but his thoughts were interrupted by more of Morgana’s screeching._

_“Arthur has only banished me at your word you poisonous bitch! I am the one he loves.”_

_Poor wretched, Morgana, Gwyn all but snarled at her in his thoughts. She was so twisted up in her jealousy that she could not even see truth anymore. If she thought Gwyn gave a damn about Arthur’s love she was sorely mistaken._

_“And yet as you already pointed out he banishes you at my word,” he sneered._

_“You laugh and you sneer but we all know the truth that you are frightened. You know that your king belongs to me,” the woman insisted with the flame of rage dancing in her wicked red gaze. “Does it haunt you to know that he kneels to me and that it is my bed he cannot abandon? Is that why you have taken my son from me Guinevere the barren?” Morgana let the word barren linger on her tongue like a sweet and Gwyn stiffened, a ripping sensation in his chest and a raw ache spreading through him like a wound._

_“Milady ignore this filth. Let us do away with her,” Gawain implored but Gwyn did not seem to hear him._

_They had taken to calling him all manner of things as the years had passed with no heirs born to Arthur. How could they be? When his heats came Arthur did not come to him. His apparent inability to conceive was blamed on his frail constitution. Beautiful as any snowflake and just as likely to melt at a touch, Queen Guinevere simply could not survive childbirth. Oh what a pity what a shame, they whispered, she would never be a mother. What a curse on a woman._

_“Your whelp,” Gwyn snarled when he regained the power of speech, “was not taken from you. He was banished along with the rest of your tribe and he would be with you now if you had heeded Arthur’s decree. He is not with you because you pilfered our villages, feeding on the blood of innocents.”_

_“It is peculiar how you prescribe such virtue as innocence to cattle. They were nothing.”_

_“They were people!” He thundered as close to striking the woman as he had ever been. “Arthur’s people!” Gwyn turned away from her in disgust, too close to violence to trust himself to look at her any longer. “Look no further than their blood if you seek his reason for banishing you and your bastard.”_

_“Bastard?” Morgana’s voice had gone frigid, sending a chill down Gwyn’s spine. “My son is a child of Avalon. He has the blood of kings. He is brother to wolves and an heir of Erlik. My dear lady,” Morgana’s lips twisted up into a cruel smile as she stared into Gwyn back, her eyes so intense as he turned to her once more that he swore they could see through his flesh. “He has power to surpass his father and that is what you fear. Isn’t it Guinevere?”_

_“He is a boy.” Gwyn answered slowly. “I do not fear children.” Nodding to Gawain and Tristan he ordered, “Take her now.”_

_Gwyn turned away from her again, this time in cutting dismissal, and Tristan and Gawain began to haul the woman backward. But with a snarl of fury and a strength that took both men by surprise she tore free of their arms, snapping the chains that held her wrists bound with a loud snap. Gwyn whirled around, ready for an attack but Morgana was too close and too quick her hands grasping his neck almost in the same instant that Gwyn wedged his dagger between them._

_Her grip was too strong on his windpipe to speak but Gwyn did not need to for Lancelot was behind the woman not even a breath after that, his short sword pressed dangerously to her back._

_“Let her go.” Gwyn had heard him in the heat of battle, but for all that he uttered the words quietly Gwyn had never heard him sound so dangerous._

_Morgana dropped her hands and Lancelot yanked her away from Gwyn and the woman crumpled to the floor forgotten as his honeyed eyes raked over Gwyn’s frame in a wild inspection for damage._

_“Milady?” Lancelots eyes always had a way of saying so much more than words could._

_“I’m well, Sir Lancelot,” he murmured, wincing at the pain in his throat. “Thank you.”_

_Gawain and Tristan hauled Morgana to her feet, her tall frame vibrating with fury. Tossing her long main of dark hair she started to laugh, the sound shattering the quiet moment between Arthur’s champion and his queen. “I heard a tale of another boy, the grandson of King Pelles. Would you like to hear that one?”_

_Beside Gwyn Lancelot stiffened, his eyes widening in shock at the same time that Gwyn froze, both of them unable to do more than stare at the woman in horror. He was sure that Morgana was baiting them, for she could not possibly know the truth. But they had to be sure._

_“What web does the spider now weave?” Lancelot bravely asked._

_“I think you shall enjoy this one. I know I will.” Morgana laughed again. “Pelles was a king under Arthur who aspired to greatness but he had no living sons. But all was not lost, for he was visited by a powerful enchantress who foretold that he would have a grandson by Arthur’s champion knight. The boy would grow to be known as the greatest knight the world had ever known. She also foretold that he would find a treasure worthy of God himself. You can imagine good king Pelles’ excitement? But beautiful as his daughter Elaine was, and no matter how Pelles tried arrange their union, Sir Lancelot proved to be an obstacle to this glorious future for he would not take her to wife, or even to his bed._

_“Never had a father tried so hard to get a man to take his daughters honor but Lancelot was sworn to another and we all know how seriously Camelot’s most virtuous knight holds his vows. He had promised his heart to a married woman and would not go back on his vow to love her for eternity. Nay, he would not lay with the lady Elaine unwed, not even to ease the ache of loneliness._

_“What woman could have inspired such loyalty and condemned such a virtuous man to such a terrible fate? Why look no further dear lady than yourself. Guinevere, the wife of his friend and beloved king, was the one to whom Lancelot had lost his heart. He swore he would never love another even if he must die alone in an empty bed. It crushed many a maiden’s dreams but none more so than Elaine’s and King Pelles._

_“And here is where the tale becomes shrouded and the truth hides behind smoke. For as the kingdom knows the pious knight fell from grace and took an unmarried woman to his bed against his vows. Elaine did bear Lancelot a son. Was it truly because the days are long for a man who goes to bed alone, who has wealth and titles and none to share it with, who can only gaze at his love from afar? Was that really what drove him into lady Elaine’s arms? Some say never, that even then Lancelot would have been true to his queen. Some say the witch spelled Elaine to look like her and that she went to him in the guise of his love, for surely Lancelot could be moved by no other?” Morgana paused in her tale and Gwyn clenched his teeth, his body shaking with barely suppressed rage. He felt Lancelot’s gaze burning into him and when he raised his eyes to meet the knights he saw in them the same fear reflected in his own. Morgana smirked._

_“Whether it was weakness or deception that spurred the conception of the boy Galahad, he lives. Though Pelles acknowledges him he and his mother live in shame, for sir Lancelot refuses to marry her.” Morgana clucked her tongue in mock sympathy for the woman. “So fallen from grace, it appeared that Arthur’s champion would never redeem himself, but alas it’s hard to stay angry at a face so lovey isn’t it Guinevere? A slap on the wrist from Arthur, a tidy sum of money sent to the boy and his mother every fortnight and Lancelot’s sins are forgiven. Are they not?”_

_No one moved as Morgana finished. Lancelot and the other knights looked to him but Gwyn was frozen, his breathing pained as he imagined the boy named Galahad. It was a fantasy he indulged in often. He would be around four summers now, still round in his cheeks, perhaps with his father’s dark complexion and Lancelot’s ebony hair. His eyes, Gwyn always imagined to be blue, blue as a summer sky._

_“Why do you spin us tales witch?” Tristan was the first to break the silence. There was not a body in the kingdom who did not know of Lancelot’s shame. Oh how it killed Gwyn still that Lancelot should suffer so for his selfishness. “Make your point and be done with it.” Morgana did not even look to him. When she spoke her words were for Gwyn alone._

_“I do not expect one such as you to know a mother’s love,” she said, her lips curling in a snarl. “But surely you know that the world is a dangerous place for a child to grow, that at any moment they can be taken from us? It is especially dangerous for a child without the benefit of his father’s name. If you have no pity for my son, have pity for the son of your champion. Children are so easily harmed after all.”_

_“I’ll kill you!” Gwyn lunged at her blindly with rage. He felt his skin shift as the beast stretched beneath it, the only thing preventing him from attacking the witch Lancelot’s arms caging his thrashing body as he desperately fought to be free of them. “I’ll kill you if you touch a hair on his head!”_

_“How dare you threaten the son of a lord?” Gawain snarled, kicking at the woman with his boot but Morgana did not spare him a glance, her eyes boring into Gwyn’s._

_“I only want my son. Bring me to him and we will leave this land. I will swear in blood to never darken your doorstep again, only grant me my son.”_

_And so the Queen ordered Gawain and Tristan to fetch the boy Mordred and escort the witch to her departed tribe, and Morgana swore in blood that she would never darken the door of either Arthur or his queen again. But Gwyn did not trust the word of the witch. That night when Lancelot came to him he begged his lover to send for his son._

_“We must bring Galahad here. You know we must.”_

_“I know it, but what reason will we give Arthur? I cannot bring Elaine to Joyous Garde and he is too young to be away from his mother.”_

_“She is not his mother!” Gwyn huffed, curling in on himself as he fought the sting of tears. Lancelot’s warm hand curled over his shoulder as he pressed himself close to Gwyn’s quivering body._

_“She is the mother he knows.”_

_“And you are the father he knows. Surely that is enough? I do not care how Pelles moans or Elaine screeches, he is ours and I cannot spend another day wondering if he is safe, or if he is happy.” Gwyn swallowed a sob and wiped his cheeks, sitting up in Lancelot’s bed to look him in the eye as he confessed._

_“I imagine him. Sometimes as you described him to me but mostly I cannot seem to help wanting him to look more of you than me… because you are too handsome for your own good,” he grinned at Lancelot’s almost bashful smile, returning it briefly before all sign of joy bled from his face. “But mostly it is because I fear for him. I fear that he will be called fair and other men will test him as they tested me. I fear he will go hungry, that he will be starved for love, that when he falls and cries there will be no one to hold him, that we will not be there to teach him how to stand up again. I fear a great deal. I did not know that having a child would mean being so constantly afraid. And now Morgana knows what he is to us. Would it be so odd for you to bring him here? Surely a father can request the presence of his son? ”_

_Surely that was not so big a sin? Gwyn had many sins but he did not count Galahad to be one of them._

_“Aye. Pelles will moan and Elaine will screech as you said, but they are as bound to this secret as we. I can hire a nurse for him, but he will be lonely at Joyous Garde all by himself away from everything he knows.”_

_“Nonsense. He will accompany you to court when you must be here.”_

_“Gwyn.”_

_“Do not argue with me on this Lancelot. I will see him.”_

_“I know, but so much of you is in him that I fear Arthur may suspect the truth if he sees you together.”_

_“And what if he does? Arthur and I stopped pretending to care where the other slept years ago. I hardly imagine he’d start to care now.”_

_“Others will.”_

_“Others can say what they like.”_

~*~*~*~

Kurt didn’t get a chance to speak to Blaine before they went downstairs. He did not want to risk revealing Lina’s secret too soon. It was possible that Jeff knew of some other danger to them, and Kurt did not want to thrust the news upon Blaine without time for both of them to think calmly and talk it through, so he waited. They returned briefly to Blaine’s room to dress and then Lina led them downstairs. A large group of people had gathered in the billiards room and Kurt became uneasy when he realized that most of the inner guard had returned to the house and that even the headmaster and Allie were present. Most unsettling of all was the sight of Ian standing off to the side near a window puffing gently on a cigar as he stared out it, seemingly dulled to the voices behind him.

When he and Blaine entered the conversations faltered as over a dozen pairs of eyes turned to appraise them, each of them eventually falling to linger on Kurt and Blaine’s joined hands. Allie was the first courageous enough to approach them, a soft smile on her face as she raised herself up on her toes to nuzzle first Blaine’s brow and then Kurt’s, sending a flush of warmth through both their bodies.

“Congratulations Alpha.” She stepped back to lower her head in what struck Kurt as an unusually formal gesture of submissiveness coming from the older woman, and even more so when she turned and did the same to him murmuring, “and congratulations to you as well Sir.”

Hearing the pack’s domineering Den Mother refer to him as sir was like being shaken awake, and as much as the submissive bow of her head pleased his inner wolf it also left him feeling incredibly off balanced. What was he supposed to say back? Kurt flushed, stumbling through a thank you as he shifted awkwardly, clenching and unclenching his fingers having nothing to do with his hands. Clearly this was some type of tradition because the others were already lining up presumably to offer the same gesture and god he was probably going to make an idiot of himself on his very first day as Blaine’s mate. What was the protocol here?

“Thank you Aunt Allie.” Blaine rescued the moment by pulling the shorter woman into a tight hug, grinning from ear to ear as she squeezed him. His obvious joy made Kurt relax and he could see how it trickled out to the others as one by one they came forward to offer the alpha couple their congratulations. Most of them were as formally submissive as Allie had been until given some sign from either him or Blaine that it was okay to get a little sillier, rubbing cheeks and in Chandler’s case burrowing his nose into Kurt’s neck and licking messily at his collarbone until Kurt finally pushed him away with a laugh.

“Sorry but that is still just about the grossest sensation.”

“You’re no fun,” the teenager pouted at him. “You smell fantastic. It’s no fair keeping it all to yourself.”

“He’s keeping it all for me actually.” Blaine winked at Chandler pulling Kurt closer to his body and Kurt felt his face flush. He’d have protested, because really it was kind of embarrassing in front of everyone else, but quite simply it felt too good being pressed against Blaine’s side to say anything. He hadn’t even realized how itchy his skin had gotten or how slowly he’d been winding up until he was experiencing the relief of their skin touching again.

_“Is this what you meant by being stuck together?”_ he thought and Blaine grinned.

_“Like burs.”_

Adam and Wes were less enthusiastic in showing their pleasure than Chandler had been but Kurt got the sense from both of them that they genuinely meant their congratulations. When Wes warned him that he’d have to work if he wanted to fill his shoes as pack Beta, his stomach squirmed with nerves for a nauseating moment. He didn’t want to let Blaine down, or himself for that matter, and hearing Wes say that was just one more nail pounded down tying him to a responsibility he had only imagined he understood; now it was real.

In that brief moment of eye contact Wes had handed him something precious and he knew it was not handed over lightly. Wes wouldn’t give it until he thought Kurt was ready for it and apparently now wasn’t that time. He was the only one who called Kurt by his name and did not grant him a title. Kurt was oddly grateful for that because if he was honest he had to agree. He wasn’t ready to lead the pack. Not by a long shot.

Headmaster Strand was the last and by far the coldest greeting they received. While some of the guard hadn’t exactly been warm they were at least formal, careful to keep any reservations they had behind respectful motions and pointed silence, but when Harvey approached them Kurt immediately knew something was different.

“Alpha.” He nodded shortly to Blaine, the motion clipped and not in the slightest submissive. When his eyes flicked to Kurt they were cool and unimpressed. “Kurt.” He said his name slowly, a hint of daring in it, the absence of any title screaming in the silent room.

“Harvey?” Blaine responded and his irritation rippled across Kurt’s senses.

“Wes will be acting as your Beta I take it?” Harvey asked dismissing Kurt altogether and meeting Blaine with a hard stare.

“That’s a discussion between Kurt, Wes and I. Until then Wes speaks with my authority and I expect Kurt will be treated with the respect he’s due as my mate,” Blaine replied, and though every word was pointed at Harvey like daggers the power behind it reached out to wrap around all of the others. This was unmistakably a command. When Blaine exerted his dominance Kurt could feel it gathering in his center in a way that he never had before. It was like he and Blaine were shades of each other, mirrored reflections, what was at the center of Blaine was now echoed in him and Kurt wondered fearfully if he could touch it too. He remembered all too keenly what it had been like holding Blaine’s power.

“Of course,” Harvey nodded, the bow of his head bending deeper beneath the command. But Kurt felt the challenge behind his gaze as he raised his head and their eyes met one last time. “I would have it no other way.”

Kurt heard it for what it was. He would never rule here. Not if Harvey could help it.

 

~*~*~

Jeff tried his best not to fidget as he was ushered past the inner guard and into Blaine’s study. The other masters were staring at him with varying degrees of censure, and the other protégés looked furious. Chandler was the only one who looked worried as Jeff was marched past him. He kept his head high and didn’t meet any of their eyes. Nobody’s reaction could compare to Wes anyway. When Jeff had first been escorted into the receiving room to wait on the Alpha’s arrival Wes had come down from the infirmary to meet them. He’d only learned then about Emma. He hadn’t known before because he’d been thinking only of saving Nick. He’d been blocking Wes knowing that his alpha-master would be trying to reach him and as a result Wes had suffered alone.

He’d never been the perfect protégé, no matter how hard he tried to be, but he’d never felt the kind of bitter disappointment coming from Wes that he did when his alpha-master had looked him in the eye and asked nothing more than if he’d been with the MacTere and he’d had to nod the truth. He felt curiously numb inside and he was thankful for that because he felt like if he really concentrated on it his guilt would swallow him up and leave nothing left. He’d dreamed about being a guard since he was the smallest of cubs. His parents had been so proud the day that the pack Beta had chosen him out of all his peers as his protégé and all of that was dust now.

He was led into the Alpha’s study where his eyes immediately found Blaine standing at the window behind his desk, whispering quietly with Ian and Wes. Allie and Harvey were there because he was still a student and if he was about to be kicked out they’d have a say. Jeff already knew he was. His parents were going to be so heartbroken.

Kurt wasn’t at Blaine’s side as he’d have expected. He was in the corner holding some silent conversation with Lina who was there because Jeff had insisted it. She looked ill, her face too pale, and her gaze unfocused as she nodded or shook her head mutely at Kurt’s inquires. Their eyes met when Jeff entered the room and he glared.

_“I know who you are, and I know what’s after you.”_

The woman flinched and looked away from him. Kurt put a hand on her shoulder and looked up at him. Jeff could see his disappointment written all over his face but Jeff had no more room to care, not when Wes wouldn’t so much as look at him, not when everything he’d ever worked for or cared about was crumbling right before his eyes. Kurt didn’t even know the truth about her. Just wait till he did. See if he was so friendly with Lina then.

“Sit down Jeff,” Wes instructed once Jeff had been lead to the chair in front of Blaine’s desk and Jeff looked at it, his legs beginning to shake. He thought that if he attempted to sit in that chair with the rest of them looking down at him he’d never remember how to stand again. 

“I’d rather not…” Headmaster Strand cut him with a frigid stare and Jeff faltered, swallowing thickly before he could begin again. This time he only looked at Blaine because he felt like he might cry if he looked at Wes and the older lycan kept refusing to look at him. “I’d like to stand, Alpha, please.”

Blaine did not answer right away, though his gaze didn’t waver, until finally he nodded.

“You understand why this is happening don’t you Jeff?” he asked and Jeff nodded. “Allie and Harvey are here because you’re a student and if Wes decides he no longer thinks the guard is the best place for you, it is up to them to figure out whether Dalton can be of further help to you… or if you should return to your parents.”

Sent home in disgrace, the thought reverberated through his head. It wouldn’t be so bad if he hadn’t been born in Westerville. He wasn’t like Rory who could go home to some place far away like Ireland and still be part of a pack. How was he supposed to live with being kicked out of the guard? Who was going to respect him after everyone found out what he’d done?

And still he had to say, “I understand Alpha.”

“Jeff, I want you to answer me honestly.” There was pressure building somewhere at the base of his spine, the muscles coiling tightly in his back as it built and he thought his back would bow under the effort it took to stay standing, but something about the way Blaine requested the truth form him made him think that Blaine had no doubt that Jeff would lie and some of the pressure eased. “When you left this morning without alerting either your master or any of the school staff did you go looking for the MacTere?”

“Yes,” he answered because in this one small thing he wouldn’t disappoint.

“You were told that any student interaction with the strays was prohibited?” Blaine asked and the Headmaster scoffed before Jeff could even reply.

“It was made perfectly clear, especially after he was caught dallying with one after the last moon. I hate being right, Blaine, you know that but didn’t I tell you he was punished too lightly?”

“Harvey, please.” Blaine waited until the older lycan had fallen silent before he looked back at Jeff and now all hint of softness was gone. “You were forbidden from speaking to Duval. Wes explained to you why that had to be?”

“Yes, Alpha.”

Blaine sighed, the resignation in his eyes exactly as Jeff had expected it. Funny that he wasn’t better prepared. He crossed his arms in an attempt to hide how desperately tight he held himself.

“Okay. We’ll deal with that,” Blaine promised and a shiver went up Jeff’s spine. “More importantly right now you said you’d learned of some danger to us. I presume that comes from the MacTere?”

Jeff hesitated, because Blaine had no idea that Sebastian wasn’t their only problem and he had no actual idea how to start or how best to make sure that the Alpha took Nick’s warnings seriously. Nick was the enemy. Blaine had no reason to trust his word. Jeff was not even sure he did.

“Alpha there’s a far bigger danger to us than the MacTere…” the words when he finally uttered them dropped like a bucket of water in the room, drenching it in heavy silence and Jeff swallowed. His eyes were drawn to Ian’s who was watching him now with the searching gaze of a bird of prey. “From the beginning they’ve been working with a master vampire…” No one said anything but Wes slowly turned to look at him and Blaine’s hands tightened into fists. The news of a vampire in the area was not the surprise to them that it had been to Jeff. What was that about? He licked over his dry lips and continued. “… He found Sebastian in France, told him that he knew of a way to get back at the Guild by taking down the Andersons and taking your power. Sebastian believed him and agreed to work with him.”

“Ridiculous,” the Headmaster immediately sneered and Jeff winced under the harshness of his tone. “Even the MacTere wouldn’t work with a vampire.”

“The MacTere hate us! You really think Sebastian wouldn’t take any chance he could to destroy us?” Jeff demanded to know, barely containing his growl. He wasn’t stupid. He hadn’t just bought Nick’s story out of some blind hope that Nick actually was trying to help him save his pack. It wasn’t easy to stand here and say things he knew nobody would believe.

“I’m sure he wouldn’t Mr. Sterling,” Ian’s low quiet voice broke the tension mounting between student and Headmaster. “But the enmity between your kind and vampire kind is perhaps even greater than whatever hatred the MacTere holds for the Guild. So I’m wondering what could have enticed him into a partnership with one.”

“He’s not a normal vampire, at least he says he’s not. Nick believes him… he’s seen him do things.”

“What does he say he is, Jeff?” Allie asked her tone firm but soft, a comfort after the hard press of Headmaster Strand against his senses.

“Vryloka,” he answered.

“I don’t understand,” Kurt interjected as the admission went off like a bomb in the room, Harvey immediately protesting, Allie drawing a shocked indrawn breath. “What is that?”

“That Mr. Hummel is a bed-time story told to frighten gullible cubs,” Harvey began but before he could finish Ian raised a hand and the Headmaster’s voice faltered.

“I hate to interrupt you Harvey but I didn’t want you to mislead poor Mr. Hummel, who I daresay needs to understand what he is up against. Wouldn’t you agree Blaine?” Something passed unspoken between the wizard and Blaine before Blaine finally nodded, his eyes settling on Kurt with an unreadable expression on his face. When he spoke, the graveness of his tone made Jeff squirm.

“The origin of vampires is a closely guarded secret among the vampir. We do know they came from Eastern Europe and that once upon a time they traveled in nomadic tribes. These tribes worshiped strange gods and practiced even stranger magic. They called themselves shadow men, because of their aversion to daylight and their practice of the dark arts. They drew their power from Erlik, who they believed was the lord of the underworld. That and their diet of human blood didn’t exactly make them popular with the common folk,“ Blaine began and he and Kurt shared a wry smile, something about the gesture intimate enough that Jeff felt like an intruder. “You remember how I told you that after Arthur died there were vampire tribes who descended on humans like a plague?”

Kurt nodded and answered, “And lycan’s collected in clans again, the MacTere were the biggest and baddest until Ian got your great great times something grandfather, Andrew, to help the Guild take over and establish a safe zone here in Westerville. Which is why they hate the Andersons and may or may not be partnering with vampires to kill you… right?”

Blaine’s mouth twitched as he nodded. “Right. The vampir have always fed on humans but until then their feeding had always been careful. True vampire hunting did not begin until after the dark ages, after some vampires became so greedy for power and so careless in their slaughter that they did not care to hide themselves. Mordred started their thirst for conquest and we’ve been paying for it ever since.”

“ _The_ Mordred?” Kurt’s eyes widened as Ian nodded, stepping towards the desk as the shadows in the study began to flicker and dance, stretching to paint strange shapes along the wall. 

“Mordred’s mother Morgana coveted the power of the vampir. She sought out a particular tribe called the Sarpe. They were a particularly powerful tribe, and closer to Erlik thanmost. It was rumored that they had discovered a way to cheat death and I believe it was this beyond anything else that drove Morgana to seek them out. There were those who were born vampir, and those who it was said traded their souls to Erlik and agreed to serve them in exchange for their power. Today they are known as fledglings, back then they were simply regaurded as damned. Morgana was already feared as a witch, she was out right reviled upon her ruturn to Camelot as a vampire.

“The Sarpe Chief came to Camelot to warn Arthur of Morgana’s intent to destroy Camelot, not particularly because he cared about the fate of Arthur or his people but because he had received a vision. He foresaw the coming of a great evil, a darkness that would devour Arthur and one day swallow the world we live in. It would be born of Arthur and only Arthur could correct it once it was unleashed upon the world. I must admit I was ashamed that I had not forseen these things myself, but there are many paths down witch I have never dared to tread that the vampir call home.”

“So the stories are true then?” Allie asked, her eyes wide and her voice about as breathless as Jeff had ever heard it. “I always suspected they must be.”

“They are. Much of the story has been passed down accurately. Arthur and Morgana were lovers and after the birth of their son she promised Arthur peace, if only he would allow her and her companions to remain in the forest to live quietly so that her son might know his father. He had more faith in her than I had, and despite all talk against her he kept that faith.”

“Foolish,” Headmaster Strand muttered and Ian pinned him with a hard stare.

“Arthur was many things, Harvey, but never a fool. I have seen love bring even the wisest man to folly. I have watched love blind some of the greatest men and women our world has ever known, and it blinded Arthur to the depth of Morgana’s hatred. He believed that there was a light in her that would overcome her darker obsessions, that her love for him was as pure as his love for her, but Queen Guinevere was never so convinced. Against Arthur’s decree that she and her companions take no human life Morgana and her fledglings consistently fed on humans, their blood lust growing by the year until their activities could no longer be kept secret. In time Arthur’s queen forced him to see that he must do right by his people and rid Camelot of the vampires he had invited there.

“I knew that Morgana would not leave quietly and I feared more death at her hands should Arthur betray her, for she did indeed see Arthur’s banishment as a betrayal. The Queen was clever enough to devise that if the knights of the circle took the boy Mordred, that Morgana would have no choice but to bargain with us for fear of seeing him harmed. The plan of course worked but Morgana’s enmity towards the crown was only deepened.

“Though the bargain she struck was never to darken the doorstep of Camelot again herself, she raised Mordred to hate his father and to believe that the throne should be his. As the story goes, he returned to Camelot as a man to exact his vengeance and while he never succeeded with wearing the crown he did succeed in destroying Arthur and all that he had built. His children and their fledglings descended upon the world like the plague that the Sarpe chief foresaw. So cruel were they that men were forced to hunt vampire kind in order to protect their villages, but the Hunters saw no difference between other vampir and those of Mordred’s line, and with the cruelty of the remerging lycan clans on top of things Hunters saw it as their mission to protect man-kind from lycan and vampire alike no matter what their creed. So you see the history of the vryloka and the vampir is very tangled, people do not often differentiate one from the other and many more question the existence of the vryloka at all.”

“But they did exist…” Kurt spoke slowly after a moment of heavy silence, his eyes moving from one face to another and finally settling on Ian. Something bothered him about the story but he could not put his finger on what it was. “And, besides the fact that they had a serious world domination complex, they were also really strong, strong enough to kill King Arthur at least. So you got Andrew to wipe them out?”

“Aye,” Ian replied. “Or so we thought.”

“How can that be? Could some of them have really hidden for this long?” Wes asked and Jeff’s shoulders sagged with relief. If Wes was asking questions it meant that he had reason to believe him, but even though he was relieved by it he was still confused. Why were Wes and Blaine so quick to believe him about the vampire? What didn’t he know?

“I hadn’t thought so,” Ian admitted. “But I have been wrong before.”

“You’re buying this?” Harvey asked incredulously. “On the word of a MacTere?”

“We have good reason to suspect that there is a vampire threat amassing against us Harvey,” Ian informed him and Jeff’s heart leaped as his cool grey eyes turned back to him. “Now Mr. Sterling where did your Mr. Duval say this vampire came from?” Everybody’s eyes turned back to him and Jeff looked at his feet, blushing profusely because he knew his answer was important but once again he was going to prove a disappointment.

“They don’t know. He wouldn’t even tell them his name at first, he typically has people call him M for Master. He just showed up one day in France and tried to convince Sebastian there was a way to get back at everyone who destroyed their clan... ” Jeff looked at Lina again. The woman had stayed quiet the entire conversation. She didn’t even appear to have moved since Jeff had looked at her last. “Anderson’s and Medici’s alike.”

“The Hunter Order?” Allie frowned. “How could the MacTere hurt the Hunters by coming here?”

This was it. He could hardly believe what he was about to say was the truth but it was the only thing that made sense. Steeling his spine Jeff lifted his head and stared his Alpha right in the eye, “Because Lina is Medici’s daughter and Blaine is the father of Lina’s son.”

Immediately the room exploded with emotions. Shock, repulsion, fury and hurt mixed together in a noxious cocktail. Jeff’s skin crawled, a sick feeling tricking through him and he fidgeted where he stood, his heart beginning to pound in alarm as he realized that the feeling of wrongness he felt was originating from Blaine. He bit back the low whine that pressed against his lips, his wolf answering his Alpha’s distress.

Blaine didn’t speak and none of the others dared to. The Alpha’s eyes met Kurt’s and held, the two men staring at one another for what seemed like minutes without end speaking without words. Jeff shifted his weight nervously, feeling more and more intrusive as the seconds ticked on. Jeff watched Kurt suddenly tense, a sharp burst of emotion exploding out from him before it was snuffed out almost a moment later as if all of his energy had been caged behind glass walls. He could have been made of marble for all that he was suddenly stone faced, every last bit of him untouchable as he nodded shortly and looked away from Blaine.

Jeff’s gaze flew wildly between the two but he wasn’t left long to wonder what on earth Blaine had said to him. A moment later Lina was standing and something about the motion drew every eye in the room. When she spoke her voice was almost as soft as a whisper but every last one of them clung to her every last word.

Well, all save one.

~*~

_“Kurt that isn’t true.”_

Blaine’s denial echoed in Kurt’s head. It took every ounce of control he had not to scream at him. He’d smelled it on Benito the very first day they’d met. He’d asked Blaine and Blaine had said he wasn’t. The MacTere thought he had lied.

Had he been lying all this time?

Pain, like a thousand tiny shards of glass being pushed through his veins, splintered through his chest and Blaine almost instantly recoiled away from it, injured by Kurt’s lack of faith in him. Kurt did the only thing he could think of. He pushed Blaine as far away from his mind as he could, wrapped his heart in steel and walled himself off from everyone and everything because he couldn’t breathe and that’s all he wanted in the world just then: just a second to breathe.

Inside the wolf howled. He could feel it shifting beneath his skin, the urge to attack meaningless because he had nothing to attack. Hurting Blaine was not an option, never never never, and where exactly did that leave him? The answer seemed to be alone, alone in the dark howling without a moon.

How stupid was it that the longer he remained in the cold and dark resisting Blaine’s pull all he could think about was how cold he felt? Blaine was warmth, solidarity and kindness, he was Kurt’s center and without him he felt a desperate emptiness inside, spreading like rot… He squeezed his eyes shut recalling the feeling of having Blaine surrounding him with all of his burgeoning life.

That had been perfection. In that moment he had known Blaine down to his soul. He’d known it so well he could have sworn they’d shared one.

He chased after the memory. He caught it in his hands and clung with desperation, letting it spread warmth through his limbs. It grew outward and he let the pull between his heart and Blaine’s grow stronger with every indrawn breath.

Trembling he let the walls drop and he opened his eyes to meet Blaine’s. They were wet, and Kurt would have liked to pretend that he shared no part in the blame for the pain he saw in their depths… but pretense had never suited them.

He knew two things. One: what he’d shared with Blaine was real and although what they had wasn’t perfect, and it would take him a life time to truly know Blaine perfectly, he wanted that lifetime. He would never feel half as deeply about anyone as he felt about the man standing beside him, and after being granted a glimpse into the heart of what made Blaine, _Blaine_ , he knew he’d never trust anyone half as much either.

Two: even if Blaine _had_ lied about Benito, which Kurt had to trust he hadn’t, it wouldn’t matter. Not forever. They’d always find a way back to each other.

_“I’m sorry”_ he thought, _“for doubting you_.”

_“I haven’t lied to you. Not about this.”_ Blaine’s thoughts wrapped around him like warm arms, tight and with no intent to let go. Kurt closed his eyes again, taking in a deep shivering inhale. He felt light headed, like he might fall down at any moment. Maybe this was why they called it a leap of faith.

_“I know. But you’ve lied about other things.”_ It wasn’t a question but Blaine answered anyway.

_“Yes.”_

He knew that Blaine would have his reasons and whatever they were they probably made sense to him. That didn’t stop the hurt and it wouldn’t mean he wouldn’t be angry when he learned the truth; but it wouldn’t change how he felt about Blaine. What they had was real. He’d fight for it. That was his final truth.

As he came back to his surroundings Kurt realized that Lina was talking and he had barely heard a word. He could feel the surge of outrage from the others. Wes was calling her a liar, accusing her of working with the MacTere to try and discredit Blaine. Kurt could feel the shock and the anger blooming hot within Blaine spreading out through the center of both their chests and he suddenly couldn’t sit still anymore. He surged to his feet with a growl just as Blaine was Headmaster Strand was accusing her of all manner of things from witchcraft to spying for her father.

“Stop it all of you!” He snapped. The words were so heavy with dominance he could feel them pushing outward, bursting from his center like ropes to latch onto the others. He had his answer on whether or not he could draw from Blaine’s power. It didn’t hurt as much as the last time, their bond was a much stronger bridge this time around. Bolstered by the power coursing smoothly through his veins he glared at each of the faces that made up the semi-circle that had turned on the omega woman who had begun to cower under their harsh accusations.

“Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound? Think about it, she’s lycan. I wasn’t even born one and even I know Lina’s father would rather kill one of his children than have one of them so much as associate with subhumans, let alone be one. It’s obvious why she’s here. She needed protection.”

“And I offered it,” Blaine replied, his voice hard. “But I never would have if I’d have known who she was.”

“I should think not,” Allie sniffed in agreement even as Kurt felt Lina’s despair washing over him a startling contrast to her expressionless face. The only visible evidence there was of her fear was in the trembling of her hands.

“How can you all be so cruel?” He could see in the hard eyed gazes of the others that they weren’t going to budge, especially not when Blaine’s anger was practically choking the air from the room. Carefully Kurt sorted through the tempestuous emotions of his mate, reaching for him across the bond even as he reached for his hand. “Blaine, you’ve known Lina even longer than I have. You were a friend when she needed it most because she was someone in need. That’s just who you are. I know that. Everyone here knows that. It’s what makes you a good leader.” There was a mulish set to Blaine’s mouth but the fire in his eyes was cooling, replaced by uncertainty.

Kurt squeezed his hand, pleading with his eyes.

_“I know deep down that it wouldn’t have made any difference to you if you’d known who she was, no matter what danger it put you in. It’s not in you to turn her away.”_

Blaine’s eyes searched his.

_“You really believe that?”_ His wonder danced through Kurt’s mind and his smile widened, growing softer. One of these days Blaine was going to stop being so surprised that Kurt loved him.

_“I do.”_

Blaine’s lips surged against his and for one brilliant moment all of the tension coiled within Kurt melted away. Heat flared between them bright and intense and Kurt’s hands framed the curve of his waist, his palms itching for the touch of his skin. It shouldn’t have felt easier to breathe when he was taking in Blaine’s breath, and somehow it did.

Ian cleared his thought sharply and they parted, blinking the fog of desire out of their eyes and blushing as the wizard said with a hint of a wry grin twitching his lips, “While it warms my heart to see you bonding so well with your mate Blaine, l think we need to hear what the young woman has to say for herself, don’t you?”

Blaine nodded shortly, looking to Lina with a grim expression. He didn’t speak to Lina out loud but Kurt could feel the buzzing of their thoughts. Finally Lina blinked, raising her eyes bravely to meet the stares of those gathered around her and took a deep breath.

~*~*~

_Everyone who knew Benito Medici the 12th knew that the greatest love in his life was his daughter. Only Lina Medici knew that any love her father might have been capable of had died with her mother, that when he looked at his daughter he was searching for the wife he had lost. It was unhealthy, not to mention stifling, but it wasn’t something she expected any of her friends to understand. The few that she had did not understand how a daughter of one of the most powerful families in Europe could have a thing to complain about._

_It was not so easy living every day knowing that everyone you loved (save one) was a killer and that at any moment one of them could be killed. It was not so easy to find sleep when she could not forget the blood on her own hands._

_“You should smile more Stella-Lina,” her twin brother Lorenzo teased her, pulling her from her dark thoughts with a playful yank on her dark hair. “How do you expect to find a husband when you are always frowning?”_

_“Owe, Enzo, you pest. Leave me alone.” She batted him away, going back to pretending to read her book. “How do you even know I’m frowning when you can’t see me?”_

_“Perhaps I am magic.” He grinned cheekily plopping down on the grass beside her with practiced ease. He really had blossomed over the years. He moved with the confidence of a man who knew his world. It helped that Lina always sat in exactly the same spot and Lorenzo knew every step of this park by heart._

_“Perhaps you are a nuisance,” she grumbled, her heart squeezing at the mention of Christian._

_“Do you still miss him?” Lorenzo asked and Lina pretended not to know what he was talking about._

_“I miss you, though I honestly don’t know why. I do not understand why you had to go away to school.”_

_“You do. Father has no use for me. What good is a blind warrior?” Lorenzo’s fingers curled in the grass and yanked up a tuft. Tossing it away from him he let out a frustrated breath. “Bah, it’s just as well. I would have died in his house.”_

_Lina knew it was wrong to resent Lorenzo his escape, she knew the truth of his words. Life as a Hunter would have killed him. She was glad that her father cared so little about her brother that he’d given up on making a proper Hunter out of him years ago, though she knew Enzo still longed for their father’s affections._

_“Did you ask father about coming to France for school?” he asked, mercifully changing the subject. “You would love Paris.”_

_“I would, but father says Sapienza is a perfectly good university.”_

_They fell silent for they both knew her father would never let her leave Rome to go to school. Lina doubted sometimes that he would ever let her leave home, even to marry. Perhaps she would spend the whole of her life in her father’s house, fearing the invasion of his enemies, guards dogging her every step, fearing that when her brothers went away they would not return. How had her mother tolerated such a life, even for love? Another sharp tug on her hair brought her back to the present and Lina cursed digging her elbow into her brother’s side._

_“My god, Enzo you’re such a child. You behave like you’re five, not a man in his twenties.”_

_“And you Stella-Lina behave as if you’re being walked to the gallows. Cheer up; there is always dawn on the horizon.”_

_“What dawn?” Lina grumbled. “And if you mention finding a husband one more time I swear I shall skewer you with the bluntest stick I can find.” Lorenzo threw back his head and laughed._

_“Lucky for you then I’m talking about change.”_

_“Change?” She questioned with narrowed eyes. What was he up to?_

_“Yes, sister, change. Don’t you remember what Christian told us when we were children? The world is full of many dark things but all darkness only exists because no one is shining a light. I haven’t forgotten those words. Have you?”_

_“You know I haven’t Enzo.” Lina would never forget Christian or the things he’d taught them. How could she? He was dead because of her._

_“Good, then you’ll be brave enough to attend the gathering with me tonight.”_

_“A gathering?” She asked, fear beginning to cause her palms to sweat. “Like the ones you attend at school?”_

_“Yes. My friend Jean, the one I told you about, he has contacts here. Plenty of young people from your school will be there.”_

_“Exactly,” Lina hissed. “What if someone told father?”_

_Lorenzo shrugged._

_“What if you spent your whole life in a cage, too afraid to get out? Remember, mia cara, the change we desire starts with us.”_

_~*~_

_“What’s your name pretty girl?”_

_Lina jumped and choked on the sip she’d taken from her cocktail only moments before that smooth accented voice had spoken into her ear. She giggled at herself, feeling wild and freer than she’d felt the whole of her life as she turned and met the bluest pair of eyes she’d ever seen. They could have been gems those eyes. She was caught so helplessly in their depths that it took a moment to get around to taking in the rest of him. Strong chiseled features, broad shoulders framed to perfection in black leather, a white t-shirt underneath plastered to a chest a movie star would have been envious of. She blushed, realizing after an awkward moment that she was staring like a dunce and he was still waiting for her name._

_“Lina, Lina Peradili.” She gave her mother’s name, as she had when she attended her first gathering with Lorenzo. “Are you American?”_

_“Guilty as charged.” The handsome stranger grinned at her. “Was it the accent that gave it away?” He winked at and Lina’s heart fluttered in her chest._

_“What’s your name?” She asked, because she felt as if nothing had ever been so important as knowing that._

_“James, James Dean.”_

_“Like the movie star?” She asked incredulously. A lot of the people who attended the gatherings used fake names. The government did not look kindly on subhuman sympathizers and even amongst the resistance it wasn’t wise to trust the others with too much information about yourself._

_“Nah, he had nothing on me,” James, whose last name probably wasn’t Dean, replied and Lina chuckled taking another sip from her drink._

_“Well you’re certainly humble,” she quipped_

_“It’s not vain if it’s true is it?” he replied back._

_“It could be true and still be vanity.”_

_“Wouldn’t it just be delusion if it wasn’t true?”_

_“Isn’t most vanity delusion?”_

_“Well there you go. I’m not delusional.”_

_“Says the man who thinks he’s hotter than James Dean,” she countered and when James barked a laugh her insides lit up._

_~*~_

_James was not Italian and he did not know how long he would be in Rome. Lina took advantage of every opportunity she could to see him. She had gotten better at slipping past her father’s men since she’d started attending the secret gatherings in the city, and being with James only seemed to make her braver. He was like fire, James, and she was tinder. He set something within her to burning._

_No one had ever looked at her with such naked want before. There was no pretense in those eyes. James could look right into her soul and claim every last inch of it. He did, every time he looked at her. There was something different about his eyes, something stranger beyond even their incandescent blue. In his eyes there was something animal. It called to her and she wanted to answer._

_“Have you ever been in love before me?” he asked, stroking her moonlit skin._

_“I thought I was… when I was a girl, but it feels silly to me now. How about you?”_

_“What about me?”_

_“Don’t play dumb. Did you love someone before me?”_

_“No. My people love only once. We have one perfect partner. I tried some other girls but they weren’t right. Nobody compares to you, Pretty Girl.”_

_A sour taste filled her mouth. No man compared to James either. It made her angry to think of him with other women, kissing them as he kissed her, holding them as he held her now. Would he remember her when he left? Or would some other woman be lying beside him in her place?_

_“James, why did you come to Rome?” She asked. Perhaps if she knew why he had come, she could better judge when he might leave._

_“I was looking for something.”_

_“For what?”_

_“Answers.”_

_“Answers to what?”_

_“To whether or not I’m the monster or they are.”_

_“Did you find them… your answers?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“What did you find?”_

_“That I don’t care.”_

_~*~_

_James had a secret. Lina discovered it one day when she went to his room at the Inn, intending on surprising him with a homemade meal and a coveted night of lovemaking. As far as her father was aware shed gone to bed early and was still tucked away safely in her room. The inn keeper, familiar with her face by now let her into James room when she showed her the surprise she’d prepared, cooing about young love._

_Yes, this was love and it was beautiful. It had given her wings._

_She waited for James but he did not come. She had fallen asleep waiting when a strange sound had woken her. She’d blinked blearily in the dim light of the candles she’d lit as the strange panting sound continued._

_When her eyes focused she screamed._

_There was a giant black wolf curled at the edge of the bed, staring at her with brilliant blue eyes._

_A second later James was kneeling over her, naked from head to toe, a hand clamped heavily over her mouth as she screamed and thrashed._

_“Lina! Lina it’s me, James. Shhh, please don’t scream.” She went still under his hand, her heart galloping in her chest. James watched her warily. “Are you going to scream if I lift my hand?” He asked and she shook her head, silent tears leaking from her eyes. Slowly he lifted it._

_“Mi amato?” She asked, disbelieving even though he was only inches from her. When she reached for him her hand shook but the touch of his flesh was warm and real. Her beautiful James was lycan?_

_“Born and bred,” he seemed to answer her thoughts. “So what’s the verdict Miss. Medici? Am I a devil like your father says I am?” Her eyes went even rounder with fear. She had never told him who she was._

_“How did you…”_

_“How did I know who you were?” he scoffed. “I made it my business to learn as much about your family as I could when I got here.”_

_“Why?” She asked, almost afraid to know. She did not want to fear him but she could not escape the realization that her James was lycan, her father’s enemy, and he had known who she was this entire time without telling her. She was alone and defenseless with a creature who could kill her as easily as look at her. She would be stupid not to be afraid._

_His eyes pinned her, hungry and hard._

_“Did you know your father keeps the skins of lycans he kills?”_

_She did know. Lina closed her eyes and desperately tried not to picture the room where he kept them._

_“There was a particular pelt I wanted, along with some other things,” he continued and the bend towards vulnerability in his voice gave her the courage to open her eyes._

_“Your answers?” she asked and he nodded wordlessly._

_To say her heart was heavy was an understatement. A sob welled up in her chest but she stifled it, guilt beating at her because her family had killed someone that James loved, killed so many peoples loved ones they could decorate a whole hall in skins and she wanted to cry? What right did she have to cry?_

_“So I’m the devil now?” he rasped hoarsely in the dark. “You find out I’m lycan and now you mewl with fear and weep? When I followed you to the gathering I thought you might be different than the rest of your family! But I guess I—”_

_“No! Mi amato, please,” she threw herself on him, clasping her arms around him tightly. “That isn’t it. That isn’t it.”_

_“Then what is it?!” he thundered pushing her away with such alarming strength her back smacked smartly against the headboard. She curled tightly in on herself, shrinking back as he towered over her, his eyes glowing an inhuman red in the dark. She’d never heard of lycans eyes doing that before, it was supposed to be a vampire thing, but what did she know._

_Only that she loved him and that she had never been sorrier for her name._

_“Are you scared, Pretty Girl?” he asked and she tried her best not to start crying again. James was right, it was wrong for her to cry. She had no right._

_“Yes.” She saw no reason to lie. “I’m scared that my father will discover you. I’m scared that I shall lose you when I’ve never known happiness like the kind you bring me. I’m scared that you do not love me as I love you… for how could you, knowing what I am.”_

_For a moment all he did was stare at her, and then slowly he crawled toward her, reaching to frame her face in his large hands. When he stroked her wet cheeks his touch was heartbreakingly tender._

_“You’re my mate,” he murmured. “You’re perfect. You’re perfect and you’re mine.”_

_~*~_

_“I have to leave,” he said wiping the tears from her cheeks and glancing around the bend in the alley for sign of anyone approaching. “It isn’t safe for me in the city right now and there’s something I have to do.”_

_“Promise me you’ll come back?” She pleaded and he dipped his head to brush their lips together._

_“Oh darling, don’t you know I’m never letting you go?”_

_~*~_

_The breeze teased her hair against her cheeks and lips and Lina smiled, basking in the joy of the afternoon._

_Nothing could bring her down today. With her hand in James’ hand she felt like nothing could bring her down ever again. James had been gone for over a month this time around. She’d thought…. Well, it didn’t matter what she’d thought. He was here now and he would not leave without her again. He’d promised._

_Who could be angered on a day like this day, with the sun shining bright upon her, when she wore freedom on her back like eagles wings? She moved seamlessly within the crowd of tourists, the city thick with them, loving each of their faces as she passed them, for their presence had allowed her to slip out of the watchful gaze of her guard to meet her lover._

_“I want you to stick your hand in its mouth, James, and tell me that you love me and will not leave me,” she demanded as she pulled him up onto the portico beside her. His blue eyes glittered with mirth and something possessive as they drank her in._

_His time away had changed him. He was dangerous, as all wild things were, but his heart still called to hers and Lina only knew how to answer._

_Grinning, James stuck his hand into the mouth of truth and vowed, “I love you. I will take you away from here and no one, not even your father will stop me.”_

_She felt like her smile would split her face she was grinning so broadly. That was all that she wanted in the world. She just wanted to be his, to start a pack to replace the one he’d lost and to be happy together. But James was not done. His eyes darkened the animal behind them rising to the surface and Lina shivered as she came face to face with the wolf._

_“One day Pretty Girl, I’m going to be a king and you are going to be my queen.”_

_Lina frowned, about to ask him what he meant by that when he suddenly began to jerk and scream, yanking his hand from the Mouth of Truth and Lina grabbed desperately at him, screaming blindly with the ridiculous fear that the old legend was true and that the mouth had bitten off his hand for telling a lie._

_But of course he was only being an idiot and playing a joke on her._

_“You are a horse’s ass James Dean, I swear to god!” She declared, stomping away from him. He caught her around the waist and squeezed her tight, nuzzling his cheek against hers._

_“Your horse’s ass though.”_

_“My horse’s ass happens to be better looking.”_

_“Ouch! That was so uncalled for.”_

_“You’re uncalled for.”_

_“I bet I could make you call for me.”_

_“I bet I can beat you back to the inn.”_

_~*~_

_The next time he left he kept his promise. He stopped her on campus one day between classes. He looked harried, his clothing mused, his eyes blood shot and something feral about them as they darted after passing students._

_Lina noticed what looked like a blood stain on the collar of his white T-shirt._

_“I have to leave the city,” he’d said, shoving a hand through his already rucked up hair. “I’m slipping.”_

_“Mi amato?”_

_“I know I promised I wouldn’t leave without you but I- I can’t, I can’t risk it. I’ll come back for you when I find it.”_

_“Find what? James!” She caught his arm when he turned on a dime, as if to stride away from her, his obvious distress unsettling her. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”_

_“I have to go.”_

_“James, please, don’t. I can’t take you leaving again. I think I’d die if I had to spend one more night in that house wondering where you were or if you were ever coming back.”_

_“Don’t you get it!” he snapped grabbing at her arms and gripping them tightly. “You’re **mine**. No matter where you are I’ll come for you.”_

_“And what if you come and all you find is a body?” She asked quietly. A hair rising growl ripped from James thought and she cried out as his nails sank into her skin. She did not move, knowing better by then than to trigger the beast. Instead she laid her head against his chest, the lamb laying with the lion. “We were seen. My father has begun to ask questions about you.”_

~*~*~*~

“When James left Rome that day I left with him. It’s strange looking back; even knowing how terribly it would end, because sometimes I think I would do it all over again and I don’t know what that says about me,” Lina confessed. Her voice was tired, but not as tired as her spirit. She’d been carrying these secrets a long time. It was a relief to let them go. No matter the outcome. “I have heard everything that people say about women like me. Why wasn’t she smarter? Did she not see the signs? My amato, my James, I knew he had suffered terrible things, some of them at the hand of my family and I was so torn up with guilt I made excuse after excuse for his violent moods, especially when they were pointed towards me. I felt I deserved it.”

_“You didn’t deserve that”_ Kurt’s adamant thoughts came to her but she could not stop to find comfort in them. No more holding it in. She would finish this.

“James never told me what it was he was looking for but we went all over Europe searching for it, dodging my father’s men along the way. He got more and more violent the longer he searched without results. He would leave me wherever we were staying at the time and disappear, sometimes for nights on end. He was never right when he returned. He would rant as if he were drunk, going on and on about find it, whatever _it_ was, and taking the crown. He kept promising me I’d be his queen.

“Things might have continued on like that if I hadn’t gotten the courage to leave our rooms one night while he was away. He never let me go out without him and I didn’t protest. My father was combing the entire continent for me so it made sense. But that night I disobeyed. Maybe I’d had enough. Maybe it was providence. I’m not sure it matters. I went out to get some things to make a meal, some silly hope at rekindling our souring relationship with a romantic night… the kind like we used to have.

“I was nearly back to our hotel room when I heard a scream. I followed the sound, thinking someone might need help. That’s when I saw him feeding on one of the maids. I watched her go limp in his arms, the life fade from her eyes, and then I watched him throw her to the ground like she was an empty bottle. When he turned and looked at me I saw only death in his gaze. I knew then that my James was gone. ‘Are you scared’ he asked me, he called me his pretty girl, as he always did, and it was as if I woke from a dream. I screamed and ran but he caught me. He bit me… he drank my blood until I was too weak to even draw a breath and then hit my body and took me… I thought I’d die. He didn’t let me. He never let me...”

Unconsciously she brought her fingers to her throat, her fingers feeling the raised skin of her scars.

“I began to notice a pattern. When he went days without feeding he’d be more like the James I loved. He’d shower me with gifts, profess his devotion to the stars and promise me that when he found _it_ that, things would be different. He’d make me swear that I loved him, that I didn’t think him the devil he was and then he’d make me such sweet promises… One day we were going to go someplace where nobody would ever hurt us again, where he’d have the power to keep even my father at bay. That’s how I learned about Westerville and how it was a sanctuary for lycan kind. When I was pregnant with Benito I knew if he kept up the same cycle that he’d kill our cub eventually, if not both of us. I decided to escape there… he’d made it sound so wonderful.

“I knew I’d only have one shot at it. I did not know what he was, whether he was truly wolf or vampire, but I knew he had enough vampire in him to drink blood for power so I took a gamble that he’d have a vampire’s limitations as well. I asked him to take me to Stonehenge during a dry spell. He thought it was an odd request but he wanted to indulge me. Vampires can’t walk on holy ground without losing their power and apparently neither can vryloka. He walked with me, and at first he did not appear any the worse for wear but with time he began to show signs of illness.”

She opened her mouth to finish the tale but found the words had stuck in her throat. No amount of pushing would bring them forth and she closed her trembling jaw, tears welling in her eyes as the memory of what she’d done that day haunted her.

“You tried to kill him?” Kurt guessed. He had drawn closer, quietly laying a hand on her back. Lina shuddered and he wrapped his arms around her, rubbing her back and drawing the words out of her with his calm certainty. “He was your mate and you knew he’d never let you go as long as he was living.”

Despite the tears on his face there was nothing but firmness in his town, absolution and the gentle assentation that she was not damned, not wretched for killing her mate.

“Yes,” the words started to leave her in a rush like a broken damn. “I couldn’t shift because I was carrying Benito, but I’d brought a knife. He never checked me for weapons. I was his good little girl. I never fought him for too long, at least not before. But that day I waited until he was weak and I fought like hell. I didn’t let myself feel… I thought only of myself and my cub and how we would die if I did not save us and I stabbed him until he did not move.”

~*~

_Lina felt the heavy body above hers jerk and the warm slide of blood coat her fingers. Ripping agony tore through her chest and she screamed. His pain. Her pain. Betrayal. Apology. All of it collided together as she pulled the knife free with a cry and shoved at the body on top of hers. James slumped over gurgling and gasping for breath around the knife embedded in his lung._

_Her chest seized and her hand flew to grasp it, choking on gurgled sobs that got somewhere between her gut and her throat._

_She saw him reaching for the hilt of the knife out of the corner of her eye and some siren went off in her head._

_“No!” she shouted, scrambling on her hands and knees to reach it before he could get his hands on her only weapon. The knife was in her hands again before she could really make sense of it. “No! No, no no no, no, no….” her protest blended into one long endless wail long after James had stopped moving and the bloodied knife jutted once more from his chest._

_She sat beside him for she did not know how long, protesting what she had no idea anymore._

_Her fingers tangled in his blood soaked t-shirt and gripped until they were white and bloodless… fitting, she thought._

_She thought of a dream she’d once had. The two of them seeing the world together, starting a pack to replace the one that he had lost. This time there was a child there too: dark hair, maybe even as dark as hers, blue eyes full of happiness and mischief. She’d call him Benito, for the father and brothers she had loved and the human life she could never return to. He’d be Benito so that one good thing could come of her family name. The three of them would be the family she’d always wanted. They would be free and they would be happy._

_Lina buried her face against James still chest and wept._

~*~*~*~

Kurt had figured out what had been bothering him before about Mordred’s tale. In all of the stories he’d ever heard about King Arthur, Mordred became a knight of the round table. If Mordred had come to Camelot as a vampire there was just no way Arthur would have trusted him enough to embrace him into his inner circle, son or no son.

But he hadn’t come to Camelot as a vampire, he’d realized. He’d come as a wolf. All that crock in vampire novels about shape shifting vampires, maybe it wasn’t so far off the mark after all.

A creature with all the advantages of both wolf and vampire, who could survive being stabbed several times in the chest and left to bleed out?

He was beginning to see why the name vryloka inspired such fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took quite a bit out of me. I meant to answer more replies before I posted this but I needed to get it out there. On a rather serious note I'd like to encourage anyone who is either experiencing abuse at the hands of a loved one or knows someone who is to seek help. We are all of us survivors, all of us beautiful, and all of us worthy of so much more than we're given at times. Sometimes someone comes along to save you, sometimes you're left to save yourself. You have that in you. Be the help you need for others and never believe the lie that you're alone as someone somewhere will be yours.


	29. Chapter 27: Battles Eve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a friendly warning for this chapter that Finn is still injured and discussion of Mpreg is heavy. Also, in this chapter an original character by the name of Molly was meant to be introduced but after seeing Penny a few weeks ago and being charmed, I decided to flesh her out a bit and do a swap because I love including Glee's characters as much as possible. :)

_Earlier that day_  
  
His left side felt numb and yet Finn was aware of pain radiating into the surrounding areas of his body, setting nerves and muscles alight with a hot ache that constantly reminded him he’d been shot. His mother had given him her shirt, demanding he keep it pressed to the wound to try and stem the blood flow. Every few moments or so she’d check his pulse and ask him if he felt any nausea. He wanted to be strong for her but that got harder as the minutes ticked past and his head began to swim. He felt like sleeping but his mother insisted that he stay awake. Besides she needed him. No way he was going to leave her alone to deal with these guys by herself.  
  
They’d only been driving about an hour or so before their female captor had stopped at an auto shop in Dayton. Carol had pleaded the whole way for a hospital for him, promising to stay with them as a hostage so long as he got medical care but Finn had protested. Not that their abductors had cared either way.  
  
They’d already admitted they planned on killing them.  
  
There had been some sort of hold up at the auto shop (and the woman hadn’t been pleased about it at all). They’d stopped at a gas station after that and Carol, insisting they had to try and get some help, had been brave enough to try and signal an overweight guy in a Buckeyes cap at the next pump. At first he hadn’t spared the van a glance but after a while he seemed to catch some hint of motion behind the dark glass because he looked up right at them and stared.  
  
He had seemed confused as Carol mouthed desperately for help, pointing to their abductors, who were in a huddle arguing intensely with each other, and shaking her head. The guy had looked warily over at the two police officers and the woman with them and then back to the window of the van in apprehension, clearly torn on what to think or do. Carol had signaled for him to call nine-one-one and comprehension seemed to be dawning on the man’s face just as one of the police officers had turned and noticed him and followed his gaze to Carol.  
  
Without warning the cop had pulled the gun from his belt and shot the guy right in the chest.  
  
His mom had screamed, her hands flying to her mouth to stifle the sound as Finn jerked in shock and the poor man they’d been trying to communicate with crumpled to the pavement.  
  
The woman had screamed something at the cop who’d shot the guy, grabbing something from inside her pocket and aiming it at him. The next thing either Finn or his mother had known the cop’s body had gone slamming up against the side of the van with a violent thud and a flash of blue light.  
  
Mage, Finn’s panicked mind came up with out of nowhere. In all the video games he’d ever played wizard magic gave off blue light.  
  
The woman had jerked open the driver’s side door yelling for the other cop to get in before the police showed up and they’d peeled out of the gas station like hell itself was on their heels.  
  
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” She’d raged at her remaining accomplice in the passenger’s seat despite the fact that it had been his partner who had shot the guy at the gas tank. “Are you insane?! We’re going to have every cop in Ohio on our asses! What the fuck were you thinking?!”  
  
Finn wished she wouldn’t shout like that. Her voice kept making his head feel like it was splitting in two.  
  
“Please…” he thought maybe that was his mom but her voice sounded funny, like he was hearing it under water. “My son needs a doctor! He isn’t any good as a hostage if he’s dead. Please…”  
  
He didn’t remember falling asleep but the next time he really saw anything he was on the floor in a house, his mother kneeling beside him gripping his hand tightly and crying over him like her whole world had been torn from her.  
  
“Mom?” He croaked and she jumped, a relieved sob rushing out of her throat as she squeezed his hand so hard he thought she’d crush the bone.  
  
“Oh thank god… thank god… I didn’t know if you’d wake up,” she rambled, her shaking hands reaching for his side. He could feel his shirt sticking to him with blood and he grimaced, trying to raise himself up enough to get a look at the damage. Fire raced through his side and he sucked in a gasping breath, his muscles giving out under the strain.  
  
“No! Shh, just relax, Baby don’t move. It’s alright. Everything’s going to be okay. I’ve got you. Just don’t move,” his mother pressed on his shoulders, as if Finn might attempt moving again but he wasn’t an actual idiot. Once was enough.  
  
“Where are we?” He asked instead and above him Carol bit her lip, avoiding his gaze.  
  
“I’m not sure. I think we’re a few minutes outside of Dayton. Some place remote. They drove up and when the person that lived here answered the door…”she shuddered, falling silent and Finn shivered, fighting back the sting of tears.  
  
“M-mom, why are they doing this?” he asked, voice raw with fear and pain and Carol shook her head, her voice breaking as another sob threatened to overwhelm her.  
  
“I don’t know, Baby. I don’t know.”  
  
~*~*~  
  
 _“Are you alright little girl?”_ A woman walking a scraggly looking dog had asked as she slowed to a stop in front of her. She'd been little then, a slip of a girl still dressed in the cotton nightgown she'd been wearing when mommy and daddy had put her to bed, before Sire had come to take her on an adventure. She'd no longer liked adventures, or strangers, and she'd especially not liked the woman's dog, a small scruffy white thing with pale filmy eyes. She didn't like dogs. Maybe before her adventure she had but not anymore. Now dogs would only remind her of white fur and pale dead eyes boring into her as teeth and nails tore into her flesh.  
  
There had been blood, brown and ancient, on her nightgown. The woman's eyes had been so round with worry as they stared at her. Brittany remembered the woman had worn a button on the strap of her shoulder bag. It had been big and black with a silver moon in the center.  
  
The puppy had growled, its white hair standing on end just like Kala—but Kala was gone, please please gone—lunging at the end of its leash and barking furiously. She'd backed away, her bare feet leaving the hot sidewalk and touching grass.  
  
 _“Down snowball down! I'm so sorry he doesn't normally act this way. I don't know what's gotten into him.”  
  
“The piper.”_ The woman's mouth had slowly fallen open as Brittany had spoken. _“My mommy read me stories about him. He sings really pretty and his eyes are like baby oceans. That's not in the stories though. He came to my window and he sang me a song. I danced for him and he promised to take me to Neverland where I could dance for him always, but he never told me Neverland was inside my head. I don't like it in there.”  
  
“You’re not human….are you?”  
  
“I’m Brittany.”_ She’d cried. That was her name after all. She’d almost forgotten it by then. _“I’m a pretty pretty girl and he… he… h-he’s a monster. He told me to run but I don’t know where to go.”  
  
“Oh... God, okay, Honey it's alright. Why don't you come with me? We'll get you cleaned up and see if we can't find your parents. How does that sound? I bet they're worried about you.” _  
  
Brittany blinked, bringing herself out of the past and watching a house with blue shutters and blue birds on the mailbox pass by her window, the memory flaring and fading as brightly as a sunburst. Her lips curled into a sad smile and she hummed.  
  
“What?” Santana asked from the seat next to her, the tense silence that had lain heavy in the car since they'd left Columbus finally broken by the terse demand.  
  
“I was just thinking about Penny. You can be stuck in the deepest darkness there is with only the unkown ahead of you... like a night sky almost. Bust some people are like stars.”  
  
Santana didn't respond but Brittany heard the way she swallowed. She didn't believe but that was okay with Brittany because she knew that when it was dark out with nothing but clouds overhead sometimes it was hard to believe the stars would ever come back. Santana was helping her but she'd had to leave her home to do it and she wouldn't be able to go back. Brittany knew what it was like, leaving home and not knowing the way back.  
  
Sire had come and opened their cages. He hadn't said much...  
  
 _“They're coming. Run. They'll kill you if they find you. I'll find you first. I promise. I'll always find you.”_  
  
And Brittany knew that he always would. He was lonely, like Peter Pan, which was why he took them away and made them lost.  
  
Brittany turned away from the window and looked at Santana who was staring ahead her hands gripping the wheel tightly as they made their way through downtown Westerville. She'd relaxed some now that they'd reached Anderson's territory but Brittany could tell that she was still on edge.  
  
Wordlessly she reached for the other woman's arm, grasping it gently and hugging it close to her chest as she lay her head on the curve of her shoulder. With Santana she did not feel so much like a lost girl. It made her all the sadder that Santana was the one who couldn't find her way now.  
  
Under her cheek Santana stiffened but the tension in her body melted away when Brittany stroked a hand up and down her arm, petting her like she used to pet Kala in-between her fits. Most of the time the other girl had been a savage creature, enough to make her terrified of wolves, but sometimes she had been just a girl like Brittany , shivering and terrified at the bottom of a cage.  
  
“So this Penny...” Santana cleared her throat and Brittany grinned. The lycan woman always got nervous when Brittany touched her and she always talked more to cover it up.  
  
“Uh-huh?”  
  
“She's cool right? I mean she's not going to rat us out to your coven is she?”  
  
“Penny?” Brittany scoffed, giggling at the ridiculous suggestion. “Why would she do that? She's human.”  
  
“That's sort of my point Britt, the human brain to a leach might as well be an open book. They'll say whatever they want them to say. If your coven guesses that you might go to her—”  
  
“They wouldn't guess,” Brittany assured her, squeezing her arm for an extra boost of reassurance. “Because they don't know about her.”  
  
Brittany ’s parents had taken knowledge of Penny to their graves and she had never told another soul. Mike and the others thought she was too simple to understand the world they lived in but Brittany understood far more than any of them realized, more than Michael who saw the world from a high seat. He was a vampire master's son and heir. He had never slept in a cage or seen the inside of his own head. There was no terror like that, no fear like that place, for there was where monsters truly dwelled.  
  
Penny had found a young girl on the street, shoeless and covered in blood. She could have left Brittany to whatever fate would find her without guilt, for even children could be dangerous and the kind of child Brittany had been was the most dangerous sort of all. She'd been returned to her parents and they'd found that out for themselves... Kala had killed thirteen people before the other wolves killed her. Brittany had seen it on the news. She'd been curled up on Penny's couch, the television casting dull colors and shadows on the wall.  
  
Kala had been just a mad werewolf to channel six. They'd never mentioned her by name but Brittany had known just the same. She'd cried herself to sleep. Penny must have been scared: a werewolf on the loose, the town on lockdown, alone with a strange child who seemed to know something of the day’s horrific events on her couch, but she'd held Brittany that night and promised that she'd be okay.  
  
If not for Penny, Brittany was sure she’d be dead. She would have gone to one of those places that studied subhumans, the kind nobody wanted to talk about and nobody ever came back from. Instead of taking her to the police Penny had kept her a secret and helped her track down her parents. When Brittany had returned to her parents she was a channel six miracle: a missing child returned. Nobody had known how broken she was until it was too late.  
  
Was it wrong that she was still glad to be alive even if other people had died because of her?  
  
Brittany had not seen Penny since the day she’d been reunited with her parents but just before Penny had left she had taken Brittany aside and slipped her a card. It was glossy black with a silvery moon on the front. The word Al-LY had been stamped on it in bold white letters. On the back Penny had scrawled her own number.  
  
 _“If you ever need anything please call me. You're not alone.”_  
  
Brittany had long since lost the card but she had never forgotten that number, nor the woman who had shown so much kindness for a stranger in need. When she’d decided to disobey the coven she’d known she and Santana would need a place to lay low and she’d known exactly who to call.  
  
She was glad they were going to Penny’s because like Santana the woman’s memory made her feel safer. It didn’t even matter so much that Sire was close. The night he’d come for her and murdered her father she’d felt him long before he’d arrived. The bond between sire and fledgling, master and creation, was keen. She’d felt him getting closer in her dreams and felt his nearness brush across her senses like a caress for the first time in years when she’d gotten up that morning. It had faded as they left Columbus but now that they were in Westerville, the place where it had all began; she could sense him all around her, hanging in the air like a perfume.  
  
Sire had been here too and she knew he would come back.  
  
 _“Are you scared Pretty girl?”_ She could almost hear him ask.  
  
Brittany gripped Santana just a bit tighter.  
  
Yes. She was. But not as much as he should be.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
 _Later that day_  
  
Dinner was a tense affair, but then again meals with vampires always were in Tina’s admittedly limited experience. They didn’t eat for sustenance and there was little pleasure found in the taste of most solid foods, and yet that didn’t stop Julia Chang from loading her table with a spectacle of brightly colored complicated foods (the more decadent the better it seemed). Only part of it was to keep up the illusion of humanity, mostly it was to show off their money for in the vampire world money was power.  
  
Talk at the table circled around the upcoming trip to Westerville and back to politics in a slow ebb and flow riddled with coded language and headache inducing riddles that Tina had stopped paying attention to around the third course. She and the other thralls were the only people really eating, their vampire masters content to nibble and sip on the tables sweetest and saltiest offerings. Salt and Sugar were both things that vampires appreciated and in such concentrated doses Michael had told her that it had an effect a bit like alcohol: strong, likely to make them dizzy, but delicious to the taste buds.  
  
With a whole table full of dinner guests who could only nibble on their food Tina had quickly discovered that vampire dinners tended to drag.  
  
“I can’t help but wonder whether we have fully considered the situation,” a dark haired vampires with a 20’s bob cut she had forgotten the name of was saying. “With his mate put down so soon after bonding one wonders how long Anderson will last? Lycan’s are so very funnily attached to one another.”  
  
“Yes. Strangely sentimental creatures aren’t they?” Aurel mused in response. He lifted a forkful of chocolate torte to his lips and bit off a small corner, barely chewing as he hummed around the tiny bite. “It’s appalling really, but I wouldn’t worry over much. The council will not allow Anderson to die without providing an heir. The results would be catastrophic if they did.”  
  
“Death, disease, and a curse upon the one that killed him: rather a mercenary safeguard.” The Flapper wannabe was saying. “I wouldn’t have thought the council capable of it.”  
  
“Then you don’t know Ian.” The table went silent as James spoke, danger in his gaze as he lowered his fork to his plate. Tina frowned, something about him troubling her but unable to figure out just what. “The council is a joke. There has only ever been one real power behind it, one reason to fear the guild and that is the Merlin. If you never remember another thing about him Hari remember that he doesn’t play by any rules but his own.”  
  
“You’ve met Ian Mr. Dean?” Flapper (whose name apparently was Hari) asked, looking impressed (for a vampire).  
  
“Yes,” James answered, voice low and sharp. “He says he is bound to protect our world and preserve it, but the little known truth about Ian is that there isn’t a single person he has loved that he wouldn’t sacrifice if he didn’t think it would achieve his ends. Never trust a wizard. I almost pity Anderson being caught in his clutches. And my friends, Ian will be present at the conclave, undoubtedly.” James raised his wine glass to his lips and sipped as low whispers broke out over the table.  
  
That was what was bothering her, Tina slowly realized. His plate was full of solid foods and he was eating every bit of it with gusto, washing it all down with the blood in his glass.  
  
“That’s it then, Ian will make sure that things go in Hummel’s favor. It’s beginning to feel like a waste of time to go at all,” Michael’s father grunted and Aurel pinned him with a glacial look.  
  
“And yet we will go. We will see justice done for our sister.”  
  
“Brittany…” James murmured and Tina noticed Aurel’s mouth twitch downward. “Will she be coming Michael?” But Aurel did not let Master Chang reply, laying a firm hand on James shoulder and gripping it tightly.  
  
“No. She will not. Not so long as Hummel is a threat to her life.”  
  
“But that’s ridiculous,” James snorted, tossing back more of the red liquid in his glass. “We go to Westerville to put down a mad creature, I myself have been responsible for creating a monster instead of a masterpiece and what better example of that than she?”  
  
“Brittany is not a monster!” The words flew out of Tina’s mouth before she could stop them. Under the table Mike gripped her arm in a grasp so tight she gasped in pain, but she understood his reaction when a dozen pair of eyes turned to glare at her, each one of them bright and cold with hunger. Vampires were dangerous she knew that, couldn’t escape it, but she was tired of waiting for the worst to happen, tired of being afraid and knowing that these people were out to hurt her friend and watching it happen.  
  
She wanted to trust that Mike would help Kurt if he could but Mike’s loyalties were to his coven and she suspected that loyalty trumped whatever he might feel for her. He wanted her, he’d made that clear, but he didn’t want her to stay human. She wasn’t stupid. She understood what his possession meant and where it all led.  
  
Maybe a smart woman would have just kept her mouth shut and focused on staying alive. Maybe she just wasn’t a smart woman. Trying not to stutter like an idiot she finished bravely.  
  
“Brittany’s not a monster and that’s exactly why Balaur doesn’t want her there.” No one replied immediately, all of them staring holes into her with varying degrees of anger.  
  
“You should keep the girl quiet Michael.” Julia Chang murmured after a moment, dismissing Tina entirely and turning her scolding gaze to her son. “It’s unseemly.”  
  
“Tina is learning,” Mike came to her defense, addressing the table at large and raising a hand to pet at Tina’s hair. Pointedly added, “You were a thrall too once mother. Father still bears the teeth marks from your training.”  
  
A smirk tugged at the corner of Julia Chang’s red lips and low chuckles filled the table as slowly the tension eased. Tina quietly simmered, biting her lip to keep from saying anything more as she practically shook with rage beneath Mike’s domineering hand on her head, petting her like a pampered poodle.  
  
“So you have decided to take her to bride then Mikey?” James questioned, his playful blue eyes roaming over Tina’s bare skin. She was never more mindful of her breasts spilling out of her neckline. She sucked in a sharp breath as Mike gripped her by the hair and forced her head to twist and offer up her neck to him.  
  
“I haven’t decided yet. I like her best of all the others. She’s got spunk.”  
  
“Necessary for a proper Bride but even more important is that she knows her place,” Aurel warned, commanding the attention of the room. His eyes burned into hers with the red of _blood lust_ behind them and a slow chill crept up over her flesh.  
  
 _“I’m sorry.”_ Mike’s thoughts slipped into hers when the focus had slipped from them and Aurel had begun to speak on the preparations for travel. _“You know I hate doing that but Aurel and my parents are big traditionalists. Tina you’ve got to be careful around them. In the old days you’d have been punished for talking like that.”_  
  
She could hear his concern, and she wanted to believe that he didn’t find enjoyment in all of this, the clothes, the insulting treatment, but it had been a lot easier to swallow in the light of day sitting across a beautiful man at her favorite lunch dive. Vampire boyfriend? No sweat. Vampires were people too right? Everything had seemed a lot simpler then. She pushed her chair away from the table, jerking away from his hands and getting awkwardly to her feet.  
  
“Excuse me,” she murmured as several gazes turned their way. “I have to go to the bathroom.”  
  
~*~*~  
  
 _“I’m sorry,”_ Blaine thought far too late. He knew that the time to tell Kurt about the threat to him and his family, if ever he had planned to tell him, had long since passed and apologizing for it now would do little good. He had thought it wiser not to, even knowing how much it would hurt Kurt. That did not mean that Blaine didn’t dread what he had to tell Kurt now. _“I was hoping that when I did it would already be taken care of, that you’d at least know that I would never allow any harm to come to them.”_  
  
Kurt, who was holding Lina, looked up at him, confusion clouding his eyes even as Harvey was accusing Lina of lying.  
  
“You don’t think we can’t see through your lies? The Vryloka have been gone for years. The Merlin himself oversaw their eradication.”  
  
“Mordred was born of a vampire-lycan union. Is it possible that this James is the product of the same?” Wes asked and Blaine felt Jeff’s relief push against him like a wave as the teen’s shoulders sagged with relief. He had not expected to be believed and his confusion was almost as palpable as the relief. He and the rest were looking to Lina for an answer but Kurt’s eyes were still searching his.  
  
 _“Blaine? What’s going on?”_  
  
“I don’t know,” Lina, oblivious to the conversation happening between him and Kurt answered the room at large. “James rarely spoke of his past and when he did he only ever spoke of the pack he lost and never by name. He was obsessed with the crown because he thought it would help him reclaim his home.”  
  
“And now we know for sure that you are a liar, Lina _Medici_.” Harvey spat the name. In Kurt’s arms Lina flinched and he tore his gaze from Blaine’s long enough to glare at the headmaster. Harvey was undaunted. “In that _story_ you told us, did you forget that you’d said this James converted you? Only a pack Alpha could have done that.” Looking to Blaine, the older alpha said with a smirk, “It’s obvious who converted her and sent her here with the intent of casting shame on your name. Now she spins ridiculous tales to save her own neck. She’s a lying bitch, no doubt one of Smythes.”  
  
“I am not a _Bitch_ Harvey Strand! James is the father of my son and I was his mate, don’t you dare say otherwise!” Lina snapped before anyone could protest throwing herself forward as if to attack the headmaster. Though his eyes went round with shock Kurt held the woman fast, whispering something in her ear that none of the others could hear. She stilled, but her body continued to shake as she glared around at the circle of them. “Believe me or not, I have done nothing wrong save keep my name from you. For good reason! You learn it and now you hate me. Sebastian isn’t any different, none of you are! I am Benito Medici’s daughter. Why would Sebastian Smythe, heir of the MacTere, even touch me?”  
  
“Because he’s little better than a wild dog! You can’t seriously expect anyone here to buy your story!” Harvey thundered in reply and the surge of aggression in the room convinced Blaine things had gone far enough. It was far past time to tell all.  
  
“Actually Harvey, I do,” he spoke and the headmaster fell silent. “You’ve been watching the news?” he paused to take in the reactions of the others. The headmaster wasn’t the only one obviously confused by this. Kurt was staring at him intensely as if he could be read like a book if only one were to look close enough.  
  
“Not everyone in the pack keeps up with human news but in light of the current political movements against us many have kept a keen eye on it,” Allie murmured and Blaine was almost surprised to hear her speak. She had kept quiet for so long that he had almost forgotten her presence in the room.  
  
“Then you’re aware of the vampire attacks in Columbus?” He asked and Kurt’s eyes widened in surprise.  
  
“There have been vampire attacks in Columbus?”  
  
“Yes, a loose rogue.” Harvey waved the words away as if the prospect of a vampire on a killing spree was inconsequential. “What importance is that to us?”  
  
“It’s of every importance,” Blaine answered and he watched weight settle over the faces of those around him, fear winding through each of them with cold tendrils.  
  
“How?” Kurt asked, apprehension tightening his chest.  
  
“This rogue does not kill like a typical vampire. Instead of simply draining his victims he eats parts of them, much like a wolf might. He savages them in ways that a vampire would never. But most importantly, every kill they have made has made it clear that the rogue has one true target.”  
  
~*~  
  
Kurt had always known that there were things that Blaine kept from him. He hadn’t made the decision to be with Blaine lightly. Love was one thing, but love didn’t an easy life make. He had known that joining his life with Blaine’s would mean sharing in his responsibilities and Kurt would never say so out loud but he knew enough about royalty to know that Blaine’s particular responsibilities while glamorous in theory, were quite harrowing in practice.  
  
People wrote countless books on the trials of kings and emperors but there wasn’t any handbook on how to be a partner to one. As Blaine’s partner he was a supposed to be every bit as strong as he was, making sacrifice after sacrifice for his people, for _his_ crown, with limited control over the outcome. He could give his all to their combined goals but always there must be acceptance that true responsibility laid on Blaine’s shoulders and therefor so must control.  
  
That took a kind of person that Kurt wasn’t sure he was, didn’t yet know how to be, and maybe the amount of strength it took to be that person was why he’d held so much fascination with royal families in the past and why he kept dreaming about Guinevere; because after learning he was being hunted by a creature that made even Ian fear, and that his family might pay the price for his continued safety, he knew exactly what he should do as a leader versus what he wanted to do as a brother and a son and he wished he had even a drop of their resolve.  
  
Allie and Harvey had left with Jeff, the mystery of the body Jeff had found buried under the MacTere house paramount in their minds. Only the Merlin, Wes, and Lina remained. There was still Sebastian’s attack to figure out, not to mention Blaine’s plans for Lina, but they waited in tense silence watching their Alpha and his mate carefully. Kurt was numb to it all. He held himself braced against the outside, arms crossed and thoughts distant. His mind was racing, caught between the urge to scream and the awareness of his duty.  
  
 _‘I know you’re angry with me.”_ Blaine’s thoughts cut through his defenses and Kurt was one part grateful and another resentful of this. Struggling for calm Kurt replied.  
  
“When you promised you wouldn’t hide anything from me… did that mean anything to you at all?” He asked the question aloud, because there was something inside him that did not want to grant either of them privacy. He didn’t know whether or not that was petty and he wasn’t sure either whether he cared or not. Blaine’s gaze hardened just the tiniest bit but he nodded, seeming to accept that they would be having this conversation Kurt’s way.  
  
“I promised I would tell you everything I could. I told you I can’t always tell you everything, no matter how much I wish I could. You knew that when you accepted my promise.”  
  
That was true. He’d made his choice even suspecting that Blaine was hiding things and it shouldn’t make such a big difference now to have that confirmed, except of course it did. Finding out that Blaine had kept something that could mean the life or death of everything he loved, even out of the desire to protect him, was somehow worse; Because he was trusting Blaine with so much more than his heart. He was trusting Blaine to make the right choices for both of them, to never demand too much, to never take what Kurt couldn’t live without, to never push him past what he could endure or ask for what Kurt couldn’t give. Was it so wrong to demand a little trust in return when he had to put so much trust in someone else?  
  
“You’re right,” he finally managed to reply. “I did. And you knew what it would mean to me.”  
  
“I did.” Blaine admitted. Something inside his mate’s chest ached and Kurt’s tightened in an answering echo.  
  
“Is my family safe?” he asked, ignoring the sympathetic twinges. He couldn’t concentrate on Blaine’s feelings and figure out his own at the same time. Sorting through and separating their emotions was giving him the equivalent of an emotional migraine.  
  
“They are being moved to a safe location.” Blaine looked to Wes and Kurt watched the other beta hopefully, desperate to hear good news. He was disappointed.  
  
“They haven’t made it to the safe house and we’ve lost contact with them. David was their liaison and no one can find his phone. Their escort was instructed to answer no other number. They may still be on route to the safe house. Adam’s going through David’s records right now to get their flight number. ”  
  
“Good,” Blaine said. “Have him report directly to either you or myself. The house may not be as secure as I thought it was.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Kurt asked with something close to bitterness. After all, Blaine had kept the truth from him so that he would remain oblivious and content within the supposedly impenetrable walls of this house.  
  
“David was always careful but it seems strange that he would have hidden his phone where no one could find it on the day when he would need it most,” Ian mused quietly. “It makes little sense, unless he expected to die. You were with him before the body was moved, Blaine?”  
  
Grief, Kurt had discovered a long time ago, was the worst kind of pain. At one moment it was hot, burning through the body like an acid, and in the next it was cold stinging at everything it touched like ice. Grief didn’t cut cleanly. It struck bluntly, leaving behind odd chunks, misshapen holes and jagged edges. Glimpsing Blaine’s grief was almost overwhelming.  
  
“I…” Blaine faltered, his mind buzzing furiously as he fought through the soup of memory. “I couldn’t say. It wasn’t even on my mind.” He glanced at Kurt and Kurt didn’t need to hear his thoughts to know how sorry he was.  
  
He knew the touch of grief too well so he immediately recognized the insidious darkness spreading between himself and Blaine for what it was. He could not bring himself to stay completely apart from it. Despite anger, despite fear, despite everything, he loved Blaine and would not allow him to grieve alone.  
  
 _“Don’t. He was your friend. Of course you weren’t looking for a phone.”_  
  
“So we must assume the worst, someone might have taken it and we must also assume they know its significance.” Ian sighed and leaned forward, steepling his hands. “There is an unaccounted for body on your land, the MacTere come for a woman you swore to protect, Balaur’s coven is days from your doorstep, and you may have a traitor within your walls Blaine. The state of affairs is frankly grim.”  
  
“Allie and the headmaster are doing the headcount. Once we’ve dealt with the MacTere we’ll retrieve the body and see if Quinn can ID it.” Kurt was almost left reeling from emotional whiplash at how quickly Blaine shut down his emotions and issued brusque orders, the very picture of confidence. He found himself standing straighter as Blaine snapped out commands, pulled by an invisible string at the top of his head and he wasn’t the only one. Wes all but stood to attention.  
  
“How are we to deal with the MacTere, Alpha?” the Beta asked and Lina shrank. The moment of truth had come. There wasn’t a body in the room that didn’t know the easiest solution would be just to be rid of her. Kurt squeezed her hand.  
  
“With force,” Blaine answered after a pregnant pause. He looked then at Lina, his gaze unreadable but Kurt felt the anger simmering beneath his cool tone when he ordered, “Lina you are to stare here at the house under guard.” The woman lifted her gaze to his, something challenging in it as she tilted up her chin.  
  
“So I can be a prisoner?”  
  
“So you can be protected. Whatever else you are you are part of this pack and I promised you sanctuary. I’m not about to let Sebastian or anyone else kill you.”  
  
“You also promised me a home here. Will I still have that when Sebastian is gone?” she dared to ask and the room spiked with tension. Blaine stared at her for a good thirty seconds that felt like a lifetime to Kurt before he finally answered.  
  
“Understand something Lina. You came to me under false pretenses. I want to trust that you haven’t lied about anything else, but under the circumstances trusting you out of hand is something I simply cannot do.”  
  
Kurt watched his friend deflate under Blaine’s words, moisture glistening at the corner of her eyes before she blinked them rapidly and nodded her acceptance. Something just a bit softer passed over Blaine’s expression before he spoke next. “We’ll discuss it later. For now there’s Sebastian to deal with. Wes.”  
  
All the Beta seemed to need was his name. He nodded shortly and was already moving for the door as he replied, “I’ll call the guard. “  
  
“No, Wes, wait.” He paused at the door, a questioning look on his face as he watched Blaine. “Assemble only the inner circle.”  
  
“Alpha?”  
  
“We’re not going to drive Sebastian out. At least not yet.”  
  
“Blaine he plans to attack us.”  
  
“He has also spent considerable time with our enemy. We need to question him.”  
  
“A trap. He attacks and we surprise him?” Wes barely paused a beat before switching tracks and Blaine nodded. “Alright, but Alpha they’ve come for her and the boy. They’ve probably got someone watching Lina’s house. They may suspect something if they both don’t return to it like today is any other.”  
  
Blaine frowned and Kurt knew what he was thinking almost before he thought it. Lina seemed to guess it too because she nodded shakily before Blaine even spoke.  
  
“Benito and I will return.”  
  
“Benito can stay at the house,” Blaine assured her but to everyone’s surprise she shook her head.  
  
“No. If they are watching it will look strange if I return by myself.”  
  
“I’ll go with you.” Kurt heard himself offer and even though he hardly knew where the decision had come from he glared when Blaine immediately protested.  
  
“No. Absolutely not.”  
  
“Why?” Kurt asked. “I assume you’re going.”  
  
“Yes. I need to be there. You on the other hand don’t.” Blaine took his eyes away from Kurt’s briefly to nod at Wes who nodded back and swiftly exited the room, presumably to spread the word amongst the rest of the guard. Though he knew it was not Blaine’s intent Kurt could not help but feel brushed aside, as if his desires didn’t even deserve consideration. With a huff of frustration Kurt strode to Blaine’s side.  
  
“Am I your mate?” He challenged, crossing his arms with a defiant glare when Blaine finally deigned to look at him again. Blaine’s eyes told him to back down. Kurt could feel the pull of his wishes, the domineering hand of his dominance weighing heavily within his chest but he braced himself against it and waited for his answer. Blaine sighed shortly, his voice tired and clearly expectant of a fight as he replied.  
  
“Of course you are.”  
  
“So this is my home now too and Lina is my friend. Why shouldn’t I help?”  
  
Blaine shared a glance with Ian the two sharing some sort of silent communication and Kurt was so close to pulling out his hair and stomping his foot it really wasn’t funny. He was so far from amused and so tired of being excluded from decisions about his own life. He had opened his mouth to say so when he felt a gentle touch on his arm and he looked down, startled to find Lina staring up at him shaking her head quietly.  
  
“I appreciate it Kurt but you shouldn’t place yourself in danger.”  
  
“Why does everyone here seem to think I’ll break?” He demanded to know, hurt that Lina of all people was taking Blaine’s side of things.  
  
“Because flesh and bone is easily broken no matter how strong you are,” Lina replied simply, squeezing his arm where she held it.  
  
“I know. Which is why I can’t just sit here doing nothing knowing everybody I love is going into danger. I don’t understand why I’m being asked to. Lina you’re a mother. What will happen to Benito if something happens to you?”  
  
“I am a mother. I know what it is to place my child’s needs over my own. Some of it is instinct, most of it is practice. You’ll learn it in time.” As his eyes clouded with confusion Lina’s eyes flicked to his abdomen, the edges of her lips twitching in something that might have been an attempt at a smile. “You’ve just come through a heat Kurt, the chances are nine to one that you—“  
  
“Please don’t say it,” Kurt cut her off, yanking himself away from her hold on his arm as if he could put distance between himself and her words by putting distance between himself and her. She fell silent. His eyes were sting and he realized belatedly that he’d squeezed them shut. Flushing with mortification he blinked them open, darting a glance at Blaine and carefully avoiding Ian’s gaze. Blaine’s eyes were honey and warm with sympathy; so tender that Kurt just wanted to fall against him and let himself get wrapped up in the heat of him. He wanted to be back in their bed, reveling in the closeness of each other not fighting and considering blood and battles. But he couldn’t, they were, and he was pissed with Blaine so screw falling into his arms like some wilting flower.  
  
“It won’t make it less real Kurt,” he murmured and Kurt had to bite back an acidic remark.  
  
“I know. But it hasn’t even been a day. I don’t know if I am. Even… even if I was, it’s still my body isn’t it?”  
  
Blaine understood the challenge of the question for what it was and Kurt was glad that he did not attempt to answer with anything but the truth.  
  
“Yes, Kurt, it is.”  
  
Part of him was so thankful that Blaine hadn’t gone on about heirs and his duty to pop them out as quickly as it would please _some wizards_ , as if that would always take precedence, that he couldn’t help the way he reached for Blaine, softening as some of the walls between them fell.  
  
“Ok then. This is my decision. I want to help. Let me help, please. You know I can take care of myself.” He implored Blaine with his eyes to understand why he needed this, why he needed to be with him and Lina when he couldn’t be with his family, when nobody even knew if they were safe, but his hopes were dashed when Blaine replied.  
  
“Kurt nobody doubts you can’t take care of yourself. It’s just that you have no idea what you’re up against,” he insisted. Gone was the tender lover he’d glimpsed only a moment before. Kurt was quickly coming to recognize his Alpha voice and even faster coming to resent it. He glared at him in return.  
  
“I do actually, no thanks to you. Nick Duval came to warn Lina about the danger to her and she came to me for help. She was honest with me.” Unlike some people he knew.  
  
“Wait, you knew who she was and you didn’t think it was important to tell me that I’ve been hiding Benito Medici’s daughter this entire time?” Blaine demanded disbelievingly, somehow having the nerve to sound hurt about it. Kurt wasn’t sure whose fury was climbing faster, frighteningly enough they seemed to be feeding off each other.  
  
“ _I_ was going to tell you Blaine as soon as I found the right time,” Kurt insisted. “You weren’t planning on telling me that a crazy vampire was stalking people I love until it was too late! So don’t you sit there and act like I betrayed you or something because I was trying to help someone. You weren’t helping anyone but—”  
  
“You, Kurt. I was helping you, whether you’re in the mood to see that or not.”  
  
“Quit helping me! Really Blaine! Quit it, because your version of helping me seems to be judging _for_ me what I can and can’t handle and I’m tired of it.”  
  
“Well that’s quite enough of that.” Ian’s quiet voice cut through the tension crackling between them. A cold creeping sensation wrapped around Kurt’s tongue making it feel dull and leaden in his mouth. No amount of effort on his part made him able to lift it his face flushed a furious red, anger mixing with humiliation as he gave up on trying to talk. His only consolation was that Blaine looked equally ridiculous.  
  
Ian grinned beatifically at them both.  
  
“Normally I’d allow you to work out the ups and downs of your new domesticity on your own but we’re short on time. Allow me to mediate?” He paused for a fraction of a moment before humming and continuing on. “I’ll take your silence for consent. Now listen to me carefully. You’re angry at each other, which happens on occasion. Just know that the bond you share is not an exclusive one. Just as love can feel twice as strong so can some of the pettier emotions. The best path is the one that leads you to try and love and understand each other, but that is a life long journey and there is much to be done at present. Normally I would agree with Blaine, it’s rather ludicrous to take you into a trap given that you may be carrying his heir and the smell of heat still lingers about you…”  
  
When Ian paused to gauge his silent responses Kurt transferred every ounce of irritation he felt the wizards way, glaring at him with pure vitriol. The white haired wizard sighed, standing up straight to speak and the air in the room seeming to rush inward as he held his audience captive.  
  
“Your bond has had little time settle and I imagine that with your family unaccounted for your wolf is even more unsettled than normal. It would probably do you just as much harm to stay behind while your mate goes into danger at this point, something your wolf knows and it’s no doubt part of the reason you’re so snappish. Any questions Mr. Hummel?”  
  
A warm sensation flooded through Kurt’s mouth and he didn’t stop to question it, immediately snapping in response “are you done educating me on how I feel?”  
  
“Not quite. You know very little of what it means to be lycan Kurt, a fact that regularly evades your attention. Consider that the person who would put the entire pack at risk for the sake of his friendship with one wolf surely might also place himself in danger to rescue his family. We all understand love Mr. Hummel, but it may benefit you to learn to understand leadership.”  
  
Kurt’s chest throbbed painfully with building pressure as the Merlin’s words struck him. For a moment he wondered wildly if Ian wasn’t right. What would he have done if Blaine had told him from the get go that people were being killed because of him and that the vampire might target his family next? And that was the thing really. He didn’t know. He’d never know. He knew how he would have felt, but he had no idea what he would have chosen in the end. He hadn’t been given the choice. Blaine had taken it away and once again Kurt was in a position of understanding the why of it but having no recourse to express how sometimes even the smart choice was the wrong one. So what now?  
  
When he looked up he looked straight at Blaine.  
  
“I know nobody in the pack expects me to be able to face what you face every day and make the right choices. That’s daunting enough… you don’t have any idea how scared I am that I’m going to fail all of you. But I never thought that you thought I would fail you. Realizing that you do…”  
  
It was hell. Pure hell that wasn’t sweetened any by Blaine’s misery or regret because Kurt didn’t want him to be miserable or regretful he wanted them to love and trust each other and they were so far from that right now. The feeling was agony after the kind of closeness they’d shared not even an hour before.  
  
 _“Kurt,”_ Blaine pleaded with him, heart and soul reaching but Kurt held himself apart. He couldn’t go to Blaine; he’d lose something important if he did.  
  
 _“Maybe one day I’ll exceed your expectations.”_ He thought. God he really hoped so, or they were both sunk. But Ian was right, there would be time enough to work through this later. Now they had to fight for bigger things. Steeling himself Kurt asked, “Ian seems to think I need to be close to you. Is that good enough reason for you, Alpha?”  
  
The title was given with deference, but they both felt the cold it sent creeping through them, like a gust of stinging wind. Kurt had accepted a certain responsibility when he’d agreed to be Blaine’s mate. He’d see it through, but duty was a cold bed mate in the end.

  
~*~*~*~

 

_In the years since King Marke’s wife Isolde had passed the trial by fire the lady had found sanctuary in Arthur’s court, residing with Lady Basina DuLac the aunt of Sir Lancelot at Joyous Garde. Wroth with his uncle over the accusation against himself and his queen, as well as his previous attempts to kill his wife and nephew, Tristan had left his uncle’s service to ride with Arthur earning a coveted place in the circle guard and in the hearts of those loyal to the high king.  
  
And so for a time the lovers were happy, content in the knowledge that no man could declare them false under Arthur’s protection and that only Queen Guinevere knew their secret. Though there were many songs sung about the tragic but virtuous love between Marke’s queen and the noble knight Tristan. Stories about the lovers warmed the hearts of young maidens in all seven lands, inspiring them to scorn any suitor who could not live up to the romance of a knight who would swear to never love another yet whom could never know the touch of his love. With the likes of Lancelot and Tristan to live up to nary a young man in the kingdom stood a chance.  
  
At one time Gwyn had found it humorous but forbidden love was not so glorious as the bards sang. There was joy in it to be sure, but such cost for a few stolen moments of joy. Few bards sang about that.  
  
There came a spring when the kings of Ireland had rebelled against the crown and went to war against Arthur. Arthur and the knights of the circle spent long months warring in the rain and muck and many harrowing tales came back from the battlefield. At another time Gwyn might have joined them but things had changed for him since the boy Galahad had come to stay at Joyous Garde with Lancelot. He could not help but to wonder what would become of the lad should both he and Lancelot meet their death on the battle field. And so he had remained behind, though he was wroth to be kept from the campaign and drove his attendants near mad with his black moods.  
  
When word came of a serious defeat that had left many men wounded including the king, many feared that Arthur would lose his dominion over Ireland if not his life.  
  
Arthur’s brush with death caused the Merlin to fear that he would die without an heir to the crown and so when he was sure that indeed the king would live to fight another day Ian left Arthur’s side and journeyed back to Camelot to seek council with the queen.  
  
He advised Gwyn that day that to ensure the safety of the realm and restore peace two things must happen. First Lady Isolde must end her estrangement from her husband and return to Marke’s side as queen inorder to end the strife between her kinsmen and king Marke for bitterness regardeing his mistreatment of her was at root for the war in Ireland.  
  
Secondly, Gwyn must forgive Arthur’s infidelity and welcome the king back to his bed at his next heat and bear the king a child.  
  
Gwyn wished to do neither but he had many long days before Arthur’s return to consider and he knew that damned though he wished the Merlin’s advice, the wizard spoke true. Arthur could not die without an heir. There was the boy Mordred, but Gwyn would see the kingdom burn to ash before he saw the likes of Morgana wear Arthur’s crown. A boy was not his mother, but with Morgana nursing him on her lies and surrounding him with dark magic Gwyn did not think the boy’s chances were good.  
  
And so it was, a king needed an heir and a queen had a duty.  
  
When Gwyn had been a squire he’d thought duty to be a noble thing. He’d hang it now if he could.  
  
Isolde was the reason he gave himself when he set out for Lancelot’s home, forbidding any to accompany him. Joyous Garde was alive with preparation for the summer season and shaking off the chill of winter when he arrived. When the queen rode up that morning he was sat astride a white charger. His chestnut hair had been braided by his handmaid only that morning but Gwyn’s ride through many miles of field and wood had shaken many tendrils loose. Dressed in mud splattered trousers and a plain tunic he knew he did not look the part of a queen but that was how Gwyn preferred it when traveling alone.  
  
When he broke through the line of the forest his mount nearly trampled a small boy who had been crouched at the edge of the stream. The horse danced to avoid the boy as he scampered away from its hooves and Gwyn’s heart leaped in his chest in fear at the near accident. The boy scrambled to his feet, dusting off his knees as he stared up at Gwyn with curious blue eyes.  
  
“Boy, what land is this?” Gwyn beseeched him, though he had an excellent sense of direction and knew well enough that he had reached Joyous Garde. The boy looked back toward the castle, his sable hair tossing against his cheeks before he looked back to Gwyn.  
  
“Joyous Garde my lord,” the boy answered in the tongue of Gwyn’s own people and Gwyn’s heart leaped yet again, this time for an entirely different reason.  
  
“My lord? It is not often someone mistakes me for a male. They call me the fairest woman in the seven lands you know.” Gwyn had been careful in the beginning but it was insulting really how little effort he had to put into convincing the world that he was a maiden. It was impossible to think that a mere boy of six had guessed his true sex. The lad’s cheeks flushed pink, making the dusting of freckles across his cheeks stand out.  
  
“Men can be fair too.”  
  
“Aye,” Gwyn agreed taking in the boy’s fine features, wondrous realization dawning. “So they can. What’s your name boy?”  
  
“Galahad, my lady. Galahad of Corbin,” he answered Gwyn’s every prayer and then with gumption asked in return, “What is your name?” The older man’s mouth twitched but he answered the impertinent query readily enough.  
  
“Guinevere.” Gwyn waited, disconcerted to feel his heart beating so heavily in his chest as the boy considered the name. His stomach clenched as Galahad’s face fell and something troubled flashed behind his summer bright eyes.  
  
“Oh. You’re the queen aren’t you?”  
  
“Aye. Does that bother you?” Instead of answering directly Galahad turned away, his tanned hands reaching for the pile of rocks he’d been playing with before Gwyn’s appearance had interrupted him. He picked up a large stone and considered it for a moment before tossing it into the creek.  
  
“My mother hates you.” The boy confessed without turning to look back at the mounted man and Gwyn’s stomach clenched tighter.  
  
“I know it.” Gwyn would be a fool not to know it. Elaine resented nothing more than Lancelot’s unwillingness to marry her and her resulting banishment to a convent; but Gwyn had little sympathy for the plight of a woman who had all but begged for it. Elaine had been willing enough to take Lancelot into her bed unwed before she felt the stinging cold of the convent walls. When Lancelot had refused all invitations and Gwyn had approached her with the deal to trade her good name for the prospect of treasure worthy of the gods, she had agreed to it readily enough. Elaine had not been innocent of the consequences to the game she played no matter how she liked to moan otherwise.  
  
But Elaine was not what Gwyn wanted to think about, not with Galahad there close enough to touch when Gwyn had only ever been able to imagine holding him.  
  
“What of you Galahad, do you hate me?” Though he asked the question with what seemed like only minimal interest Gwyn’s flesh felt as if it crawled with ants. His every muscle was tense as he waited for the boys reply.  
  
“No. “At the simple word relief washed through Gwyn and he blinked away the sudden stinging in his eyes. He was a queen, and therefore a king. It would be a silly thing to cry now at something so simple as that. Galahad picked up another rock, only this one he placed on top of a partially constructed wall with all of the careful precision of a mason. His pink tongue poked out briefly between his lips as he focused, before he licked them and mumbled, “My father sinned but it was not you he lay with my lady and Sister Rosa say’s it is wrong to judge people for the sins of others.”  
  
Gwyn cocked an eyebrow at him, wondering at his tone. The child did not sound as if he appreciated his caretaker’s good council.  
  
“But I take it you find not hating me difficult?” When the boy did not reply Gwyn smiled as encouragingly at him as he could muster. “I promise not to behead you. I imagine that it would be very difficult not to hate the woman who keeps your father from your mother.”  
  
Gwyn did not always know if he believed in hell but he knew in his heart of hearts that if it did exist then he was surely bound there for it was by his selfishness that Galahad was named a bastard, left to suffer the cruelty of others and to rely on the benevolence of men who thought themselves his betters. It made a hot rage boil within him to think of how he would suffer at the hands of others when by right they should have their tongues cut out for an ill word spoken to him. He was the blood of the noble house Dulac, the blood of the kings of Gwent. He would have been a king himself one day if gods were just.  
  
“It’s just that… I don’t think God understands how hard it is not to hate sometimes,” Galahad finally answered and pain like a blade went slashing against Gwyn’s chest. He turned from the lad to hide the emotions he fought desperately to wrestle under control. He would not shame himself with tears. It was unfair to the boy. The queen of Camelot prided himself on the strength of his voice when he turned back and finally managed to reply.  
  
“No, I don’t think he does. But I won’t tell him if you won’t.”  
  
Despite the older man’s attempt at humor Galahad did not smile at him. The boy watched Gwyn carefully. He saw right through the older man’s bravado.  
  
“I’ve made you sad.” He seemed to decide as he spoke. “Forgive me my lady; I should not have spoken as I did. I only hate you once in a great while....” Galahad fell short and wrinkled his freckled nose, such distress in his earnest gaze that despite himself the queen began to smile again. He took private delight in observing so much of Lancelot in his mannerisms, for his love had spoken true the, as far as the boys looks went he was clearly Gwyn’s reflection.  
  
Gwyn dismounted and approaching Galahad, who slowly raised his head to stare up at the imposing figure standing before him, eyes shimmering with unshed tears of regret. It warmed Gwyn’s heart to know that the boy was sensitive enough to regret injuring the feelings of another, even someone he hated once in a great while. Strangely enough it made being hated something easier to bear.  
  
“There is no need to seek my pardon Galahad.”  
  
“But you are not to blame, not truly,” the boy murmured, hanging his sable haired head once again. “My father could redeem me and my lady mother but he… he loves you. Everyone knows that. Sister Honeria thought it was romantic but she’s a fool. It’s a sin to covet another man’s wife.”  
  
“You know quite a bit about sin don’t you?” Gwyn questioned. He’d expected it what with the boy having spent so much of his life in a convent before coming to Joyous Garde and having a holy sister for a caretaker, but it unsettled him hearing such piety come from the mouth of someone so young.  
  
“Aye my lady, I know all seven of the deadly ones and Sister Rosa makes me write long lists of them. I must be careful, more so than most men on account of my birth…” Gwyn’s eyes narrowed dangerously and Galahad faltered, his brow furrowing in confusion as he rushed to explain, “I was born in sin my lady. I’m cursed. My soul already has black on it and I can’t afford any more.”  
  
“Did your sister Rosa tell you that as well?” the queen asked and the boy hesitated before he nodded in reply. Anger flared bright in Gwyn’s chest. “Perhaps you spend too much time at home with the good sister. I shall have to have a discussion with your father about bringing you to court. How old are you now?”  
  
‘Six summers’ Gwyn thought even as Galahad answered, he had counted every one since The Merlin had taken his child from him.  
  
“Six summers is old enough to squire. Why has your father not brought you to Camelot?”  
  
“Because I am small,” the boy answered almost before Gwyn could finish, a scowl twisting his features. “He says the other pages will be rough and he worries they will taunt me.”  
  
“Aye, they will…” for a moment memories from his own years as a page, and then a squire, surged to the front of Gwyn’s mind. There had not been a moment of his youth when other men had not wanted to test his mettle simply because he was slight and cursed with prettiness. Lancelot was a pretty creature to be sure, but he had never been mistaken for a maiden. His was a face that women swooned for and his bearing one that men respected and envied. Staring down at Galahad who stared back up at him with such misery Gwyn understood that this was something that Lancelot would never be able to understand, and that in this he was needed.  
  
Gwyn searched the nearby ground until he found a likely stick and knelt to grab it. Then, kneeling so that he and the boy were eye to eye Gwyn offered the startled child the branch, speaking only when Galahad had finally reached out to grab it.  
  
“The other boys will single you out. They will push you to fall, hit you just to see if are soft as you look. But you aren’t, are you boy?”  
  
“I’m no woman. No matter what they say,” the child insisted heatedly and Gwyn had to fight a grin to remain stern.  
  
“What has that to do with anything? Do I look soft?”  
  
“You aren’t other girls. You are a queen. It’s different.”  
  
“A king is still a man. So a queen is only a woman. I ask you again, do I look soft to you Galahad?”  
  
“No my lady.” The boy had the grace at least to look shamefaced.  
  
“Remember that strength and hard headedness are not one and the same Galahad, never take a person for granted simply for how they look.”  
  
“But what about those who take me for granted?” the boy pouted and finally Gwyn let himself grin.  
  
“The devil can take them.”_  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
Penny had cats.  
  
One of them was a big fluffy white thing the woman had the nerve to call Snowflake when by the size of it, it deserved a name like Snow _drift_. The other was a skinny slip of a thing with ice blue eyes that she called Cicle. She also had a bug fuzzy geriatric mess of a dog she called Snowball.  
  
Santana wasn’t surprised at all when the short ashy haired woman picked up on her judgment. You couldn’t have paid her to keep the judgment off her face.  
  
Penny had explained that around Christmas time the local shelter did free adoptions and she was a sucker, which she guessed explained the theme but then again it wasn’t like anybody had forced her to keep the names either so…  
  
Penny was certifiable. It was as simple as that.  
  
It was the only reason Santana had to explain why a reasonably attractive woman in still lived alone in Westerville of all places surrounded by dusty books and dead plants.  
  
“Herbalism,” the small woman had offered when she’d noticed Santana eyeing the bushels of drying plant life hanging in her kitchen window. “It’s the only magic I can do.”  
  
“You’re a wizard?” Santana had snapped, reaching unconsciously for Britt who had been standing up on tip toe to smell some purple flowered plants. Penny beamed back at her as if Santana’s snarl didn’t bother her at all.  
  
“Well a Witch if you’re being P.C. on my mother’s side but my blood’s really thin. Like I said, I can only do rudimentary healing potions, but they’ve always been good. Good enough to make me ask my mom about my great Grandma Helen anyway.”  
  
She had a nut loose this Penny, but considering the only other Witch she knew was Sue, Santana was beginning to think it was a trend among wizards. It didn’t really matter though. A cuckoo bird Penny might be but Santana would never forget how wide the woman had thrown open the door when they’d arrived and how quickly she’d pulled Brittany into an almost strangling hug, tears leaking out the corner of her eyes.  
  
 _“I heard about your parents… on the news. I tried to find you but they’d taken you somewhere. I thought for sure they’d taken you to one of those terrible labs. All this time, I thought you were dead. When you called I about fainted.”_  
  
Santana couldn’t figure it out. Brittany had told her the story of course but Santana was shocked to find out that Penny hadn’t even known Britt was a vampire when she’d rescued her. What kind of nut job took a risk with their life like that?  
  
She supposed she should be happy that Penny was crazy. As it was, Brittany needed to stay out of sight and Santana didn’t put it past her leech buddies to search every hotel in Westerville for them. It wasn’t like there were a lot of them either.  
  
Penny had fed them and she and Britt had spent hours gabbing about the wonders of being a vampire, a quarter witch and a wolf, and how _wonderful_ it was that they could sit around a table eating frozen lasagna and singing Kumbaya, while Santana stared mulishly out the window wracking her brains for a plan.  
  
She had to get an audience with Blaine before Britt’s coven arrived and get him to agree to invite Brittany onto his land. Santana could pass through the outer parts of the forest because she was lycan, the guard might even have let a human pass peacefully through but there wasn’t a chance in hell they were letting a vampire anywhere near Anderson House or Dalton. There could be trouble if someone learned Britt had stepped foot in Westerville at all, let alone the forest. She needed Anderson’s permission but she had no idea in hell how they were going to get it.  
  
“Try Café Lynch,” Penny suggested when Brittany relayed the problem to her. “It’s near the reserve and a lot of lycans live around there. The Lynche’s are lycan themselves, so whenever I need to get in contact with their Alpha I send a message through them. Well I give it to Mercedes and she gives it to them-”  
  
“Why do you have business with Anderson?” Santana asked, immediately suspicious and Penny pointed to the fridge where Santana saw a big black flyer pinned with a magnet. It had a silver moon on it. “I run the local chapter of Al-Ly,” Penny explained. “A couple of times we’ve needed his permission for things. I’ve been trying to get his okay to do a tour of the school for years but—”  
  
“It’s not a zoo!” Santana snapped, cutting her off again. “That school is all the normalcy those kids have. They don’t need a bunch of strangers gawking at them like it’s a side show.”  
  
“Santana, please.” Brittany laid a hand on her arm and Santana felt a small flash of guilt.  
  
“Maybe you’re right. That’s probably why he has always said no.” Penny allowed quietly. “But I also know that for a lot of people in this town, in the world, they’re afraid of what they don’t understand. They’re scared of all the myths and all the rumors they’ve heard. I think things would change if they really saw how much we’re all alike when it comes down to it.”  
  
Santana rolled her eyes. She didn’t have time for this.  
  
“Yeah. Right. I’m sure if Senator Ryan knew me he’d be going around kissing cubs and handing out public apologies.” She shrugged Brittany’s hand off and stood, done with sitting around and ready for action.  
  
“Where are you going?” the vampiress asked and Santana hated the way the other woman’s worry pulled at her and made her steps slow.  
  
“Café Lynch,” she grumbled in response, barely pausing to look back. “It’s the first decent suggestion I’ve heard all evening.”  
  
~*~*~  
  
 _Dublin Ohio_  
  
Tina did not consciously decide not to immediately return to the table. She’d gone to the bathroom and stared at her reflection for an inexplicable amount of time before the pressure of the evening seemed to overtake her all at once and she’d had a bit of melt down.  
  
Everything that was happening was so beyond her and she just had no idea what to do. It wasn’t that she’d been hurt or that she feared she’d be hurt. Strangely even surrounded by danger she felt safe with Mike, but she still knew in her head that wasn’t a sane response. These people thought so little of her. No, more than that, they hated her. They despised her humanity and coveted the blood that ran through her veins and the only thing they respected was the fact that she belonged to Mike and might one day be his Bride.  
  
Tina shivered, swallowing down sobs as she splashed water over her face.  
  
Did she want to be a Bride? She wasn’t sure. That was why Mike never shared his blood with her. Unlike lycan conversion the vampire conversion process was slow, bloody, and so taxing on the body it wasn’t uncommon to fall into a death-like coma at the end. Some never woke up from it. Some like Brittany didn’t wake up right.  
  
And yet most did, safely, and Mike insisted it was a great honor to be chosen by a vampire master for creation.  
  
“Creation…” she tested the word on her tongue. She wouldn’t mind the prospect of conversion so much, even the possibility of dying part, if Mike and his family didn’t talk about it like there was a flaw in her original design, like she should be throwing herself on the ground and thanking them for the chance to stop being human.  
  
“There _is_ a flaw in your design.”  
  
Tina whirled around at the unexpected voice, her heart slamming in alarm when she saw the man leaning on the door behind her. Somehow James had entered behind her without making a sound and without appearing in the mirror she’d been staring into only moments before. The tall vampire had his arms crossed across his broad chest, the shape of his biceps emphasized. He took up more space in the opulent bathroom than his lean frame demanded, his aura crowding hers. With his arms crossed like that Tina could see that he wore a band of what looked like fur low on his wrist where the sleeves of his tux had pulled up.  
  
Something about his physique, like the food he’d had on his plate, struck a discordant cord in Tina and she backed away from him, like a rabbit cornered by a fox.  
  
He was so different from every other vampire she’d met, more alive, more volatile, and far more dangerous for that.  
  
“Do you want to know a secret Tina?” He asked in an almost bored tone. Without waiting for her response he replied, “It’s all talk. The superiority of the vampir, the nobility of being a born vampire verses created, the ancient noble heritage of being Erlik’s chosen and blah blah blah. You know what it all is? Horse shit.” James let his head thunk lightly on the door as he laughed his face twisted up in a cruel expression of mirth. “Listen up Darlin’ because nobody else is going to tell you the truth. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity you’ve got here. Everybody’s created. Everybody’s just blood and bone and meat at the base and somewhere somehow he got lucky enough to discover a bit of magic and acquired an edge. Magic is the only truly great thing out there. Magic is power, Pretty girl, and you either get power or you get screwed. It’s as simple as that.” The vampire male’s lips curled bitterly around the words. When he looked at her again he almost looked pleading, desperate for her to understand. “You could be more then you ever imagined. Tina if you had even a smidgen of understanding…. If Michael loves you he’ll turn you.”  
  
 _‘He wasn’t turned willingly’_ Tina thought. She was unsure how she came to that conclusion but she was more certain of it the longer they stared at one another. She remembered what Mike had shared with her about his coven finding James at fourteen, an unguided fledgling, and she wondered how that had come to be… how he might have suffered.  
  
“It’s like dying without the rest at the end.” Tina jumped when he spoke again, voice low and tense. His eyes were burning into hers and she knew he’d plucked her thoughts right out of her head. “You’ll pray for death by the time you go under. Everything around you will burn and your insides will turn out. You’ll bleed, so much blood you’ll think you won’t survive it and maybe you won’t. Your heart will slow and you’ll fall asleep, but you can still hear everything. I heard my father. He thought I was dead you know? He nearly lost his mind.” The corner of James mouth twitched and Tina watched him try to suppress a barking laugh and fail.  
  
“I wasn’t dead, just trapped in hell, going mad and getting madder the longer I stayed there. I thought about how much I hated them, the vampires who had done this to me, the parents who hadn’t protected me, the thieves who had taken the beauty from my world and turned it hideous, turned me hideous…” the fingers of his right hand stroked the band he wore as he remembered, the tips pulling the white and grey strands to point. “When I woke up I was strong and I realized I had the power to create beautiful things. I could _make_ the world beautiful again. More importantly I knew I could create a family that would never die and that way they’d always be with me…”  
  
The longer James stroked that band on his wrist the more Tina was disturbed by it, something about the way he looked at the thing making her stomach churn. She felt sorry for whatever poor animal had been skinned to provide the fur. He tensed and she realized he’d heard those thoughts too. He yanked his sleeve down over the band and when he looked back at her his eyes were clear once more, a stormy blue as he smirked at her.  
  
“It’s been sort of a vision in progress. I must admit there have been some setbacks, mainly my drinking problem.” He chuckled to a joke only he was party to and straightened, taking a step towards her as she took another back. “I also woke up thirsty Tina, and let’s just say sometimes it gets the better of me.”  
  
He took another step toward her and she fled backward, only to be met with the hard edge of the sink.  
  
She began to scream for Michael but before the thought could even fully formulate he was there with his arms around her and his hand over her mouth, his eyes captivating hers in a wicked dance of blues.  
  
“Shhh,” he crooned softly into her ear. “I need your help Tina, so I need you to listen very, very, closely.”  
  
~*~*~  
  
 _Westerville_  
  
  
As night had fallen on the subdivision of Annehurst it had grown unusually quiet. Word had spread fast within the pack that tonight was a night to stay indoors. Chandler and the other protégés had been tasked with alerting the other residents to stay indoors without alerting anyone who might be watching as to what they were up to.  
  
He could feel the change on the air as the guard prepared for battle like wind through his fur reaching to press at his skin. His strides were quick and anxious as he bound through the wood, returning from his assigned block in search of Adam. Despite having been in training since he was thirteen Chandler had never been part of a real battle before. Westerville was generally peaceful and the few minor fights he’d been a part of were no enough to really prepare him for what was about to happen. He was scared if he was honest. He’d spent more time than was necessary at his parents’ house that afternoon- and he was pretty sure Adam had included it in his route for that very reason—but when it had been time to go he went, determined to be ready for whatever was to come.  
  
Finished with his duties he went to find his alpha-master at the school. Adam was loping down the front steps when Chandler entered the yard. He was little more than a peppered blur as he shifted from wolf to man almost sliding to a stop in front of the older male. Adam blinked in surprise, the tensing of his shoulders a giveaway that Chandler had taken him off guard. The teenager allowed himself to indulge in a small grin. The speed at which he could shift was a gift and he'd never not be tempted to show off where Adam was concerned.  
  
“Report?” Adam asked as Chandler fell into step beside him and winced at the numb feeling that shot up his legs. They felt like they had fallen asleep and he was walking on them too soon. _‘Okay’_ he thought, maybe he shouldn't have tried to show off quite so much.  
  
“The word is out. I sent Rory and the others to help with the funeral arrangements.” He reported and Adam nodded at him the small smile the only sort of praise Chandler knew he was likely to receive. “Also Lina’s house looks to be secure, but there’s definitely someone watching it. Trent caught a scent nearby not a half hour ago and it’s definitely not Pack.”  
  
“Damn,” Adam muttered his anxiousness pulling at Chandler’s own mood. “You did well Chan. Please tell the others to report promptly to their alphas after the burial tonight. Anyone late will be severely reprimanded. Is that clear?”  
  
The command made Chandler stand straighter, nodding eagerly even before he’d fully understood it. Warmth twisted deep in his belly and he fought not to blush because good god he was supposed to be working and yeah the moon was close but now was so not the time. It was so hard though. Adam really had no idea how hot he was. Or maybe he did. Maybe he knew exactly how he looked striding around the grounds topless and all mused looking like he’d just rolled out of bed and he was _trying_ to remind Chandler of what it had been like between them that morning. Adam touched him all the time. They were master and protégé of _course_ they played together, but Adam had never held him like that before, pinned him like that before, and Chandler really thought they should talk about that, damn it! Why was Adam so dead set on making this ten times harder than it had to be?  
  
“Chandler?” Adam’s annoyed snap jolted him out of his thoughts and this time he did blush.  
  
“Yes, Alpha?”  
  
Adam gave him an exasperated look but his mouth twitched just the same and Chandler knew he wasn’t as annoyed with him as he was trying to sound.  
  
“Pay attention. I don’t talk for my health. “  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“You’re not to tell anyone what I’m about to tell you. Understand?” Chandler’s stomach tensed but he nodded anyway all thoughts of the way it had felt to have his alpha pressed against him leaving his mind. Adam looked so grave it was enough to make his nerves twang. “Tonight, no matter what happens you’re to stick with Kurt. Do you hear me Chan? No matter what.”  
  
 _Wrong_ , his instincts screamed and he scowled. As a guard wolf in training his duty was to Alpha first, and then to his master. There were a million terrible things that could go wrong in a battle and masters and protégés were a team. They were the second best to mated pairs for god’s sake, why would Adam want Chandler to be anywhere else but at his side? He didn’t understand.  
  
“Of course I’ll look out for Kurt but-”  
  
“No buts Chandler. I’m telling you this now because I need your promise… because I know what I’m asking will be difficult.” Adam gripped his shoulder in a tight grip and leaned close. “Our Alpha needs you to do this because you’ve been trained for a real fight and Kurt hasn’t. I can’t do it. Wes needs to stay with Emma and I will take his place. Blaine can’t split his focus between keeping Kurt safe and leading the guard. He needs to know Kurt is protected. Can I trust you to do that?”  
  
Chandler considered the question. Could he be trusted to give his life for the preservation of his Apha’s mate? As a guard wolf his answer should be nothing but yes. He knew what Jeff would have said to him about that. Straight A Sterling who knew every line in the guard code by heart. And yet despite his resentment Chandler knew the importance of the code, the importance of Kurt’s role within the pack, his own place within it and the importance of his vows to protect, honor and serve. He knew that… his answer was going to be yes, had to be yes, but he was more than just a guard wolf he was also a man and he didn’t have words to explain how he fel about the man standing in front of him, asking the impossible. He was asking Chandler to trust that nothing would happen to him and not to intervene if it did. He was asking Chandler to abandon every personal desire, to set aside every wish, to do his duty.  
  
Jeff would have asked what he was waiting for; but then again maybe not. Jeff was locked up because he’d had a duty and he hadn’t done it. Would it be the same for Chandler? When it came down to the wire could he do what he knew he had to do, or would love win out?  
  
“On one condition…” he heard himself say and above him Adam’s brows narrowed in intense displeasure.  
  
“I wasn’t aware your vows came with conditions Chandler.”  
  
“They don’t. But you’re going to hear them anyway.” Adam snapped his mouth shut with a click and begrudgingly nodded. Chandler felt some relief but his heart still began to race as he licked his lips, hardly daring to believe he was about to demand what he was about to demand.  
  
“It doesn’t have to be now but before… just before, I want you to kiss me. Kiss me like you might if you’d give yourself permission to want it, like you might if you saw me as the adult you’re asking me to be right now. And when it’s over take me to bed. We can wait till I’ve passed my trails to mate but there’s no reason why we can’t be together before then unless you don’t want me. If you don’t…” Chandler swallowed the lump that had risen in his throat, almost unable to bear that prospect but willing himself to be a man about it for god’s sake and not ruin a fantastic speech by being a wooby sap. “If you don’t then fine, your loss, but don’t you dare use that lame excuse that I’m a child.”  
  
Chandler finished in a bit of a rush, his heart hammering fearfully because holy shit he’d just said those words to his _alpha_. His mother would have smack him for impertinence. Nobody would blame Adam for biting his face off, his sister Amy would just be shocked it hadn’t happened sooner and oh he thought his heart might actually drop so hard it might actually fall out his ass if Adam said he didn’t want him; like right out to shatter on the floor into smithereens.  
  
He felt something touch his cheek and he startled, not calming any when he took in how close Adam had gotten, how hot his gaze was as his eyes burned holes into Chandler’s soul and his fingers just barely grazed his cheek.  
  
“You are still a child,” he said and Chandler’s heart began to fall.  
  
And then Adam’s hands framed his face and his lips were pressing hard against his, swallowing Chandler’s cry of shock. It was dangerous, how fast his heart went from dropping to threatening to burst within his chest, but he’d have risked it and a thousand other deaths for this. His hands found the curves of Adam’s face, holding him and the moment to his mouth for as long as he could keep it. They kissed with the fever of desperation, the sloppiness of time slipping away too fast, the hunger of unrestrained desire and he’d never held onto anything so tightly in his life.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
Lycans did not believe in burying the dead. That night, shortly after the sun had set, they gathered on the east edge of the lake where the bodies of Flint and David had been set on a giant mound of wood that many in the community had labored to erect that day.  
  
There was no announcement that Kurt heard for when the bodies would be burned. He and Lina were helping get the students fed at the house while there dorms were still being disinfected. The house omegas suddenly had an entire school to feed for the evening and they’d appreciated their help as well as that of a few of the omegas who lived in town. They’d all been busy cleaning up after dinner, Kurt happy to lose himself in the task and not _think_ about anything (especially how angry he was with his mate) when outside he’d heard a wolf begin to sing.  
  
The sound was muted by the walls of the house but Kurt knew that every last one of them heard the song as clearly as if Blaine were in the room with them, each beautiful note resonating in their cores.  
  
One by one—all over the house, the forest, the town—they’d dropped what they were doing and followed their Alpha to the place where their packmates had been laid, ready for burning. Blaine had been little more than an immense black shadow slinking through the trees, his eyes glowing bright in the gathering darkness like torches. He didn’t look quite real, Kurt thought as the progression of mourners came to a halt around the mound. He could have been any creature out of myth, standing guard over them all from atop the jutting rock at the edge of the lake; a guardian not of this world and separate from each of them.  
  
Kurt hadn’t seen this much of the pack together since Blaine had gathered the community to fix Lina’s house. His heart was heavy as he observed their silent grief. They touched the bodies as they passed, the young openly crying as they mounted the bodies upon the mound.  
  
Wes stepped forward and thanked both David and Flint for their service. It seemed that even among lycans it was not good form to speak ill of the dead for no one breathed a word against Flint or seemed to care _how_ he had died, just that he had.  
  
It did not escape Kurt’s notice that more than a few eyes turned to him with looks of hatred, their thoughts trickling to him like whispers in a crowd.  
  
 _… his fault… such a waste, dying over a an omega… he’s a beta I heard… still a sub…_  
  
Kurt curled his fists, his nails digging into his palm and stared straight ahead watching the bodies of Blaine’s oldest friend and the man who had set out to be his rival burn. They could think what they would. He wasn’t going to blame himself for Flint’s choices. David… if not for David Blaine might not have reached him in time… and now he was gone. Kurt could only hope he was somewhere better now, reunited with his mate. Kurt’s eyes found Blaine again, with no instruction from him. He was still sitting up there alone on that rock… pride rock, Kurt remembered Blaine telling him that he and his brothers had nicknamed it for the way it stuck out from the ground.  
  
The light from the fire dancing across his coat was strangely beautiful. He was cold and black as obsidian and he’d made himself equally hard.  
  
A shudder welled up in Kurt and he bit his lip, biting back the discomfort he felt. He wanted to leave the circle around the mound and go to Blaine, to lay his head against his back and wrap his arms around his muscle and bone and remember how to breathe.  
  
 _‘And will that be how it is between the two of you forever’_ , he thought, _‘Blaine hurts you and you forgive because you can’t stand being without him for five seconds?’_  
  
He forced himself to look away, blinking away the tears that stung at his eyes.  
  
“You only hurt yourselves you know… and needlessly.” He had no idea how long the woman had been standing at his side before she spoke but far from being a comfort her presence only made him more desperate not to be seen needing Blaine as bad as he did.  
  
“It’s complicated Lina, you wouldn’t—”  
  
“Understand?” She finished for him. “Is it that you think someone I love has never withheld the truth from me? Or is it that I have never had to fear for those I love, knowing I am helpless to help them? What is it that I don’t understand?” Kurt flushed with shame. It had been a stupid thing to say, he knew that. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. Sometimes she felt like his only true friend here.  
  
“Not your only.” She smiled just the tiniest bit. “Chandler would be hurt to hear you think so and Blaine certainly would be… but there is a part of you that wishes he would hurt. Isn’t there?”  
  
“Does it matter? Aren’t you going to tell me how childish I’m being and how I should just accept that he did what he had to and make up with him?”  
  
“Can you?” Kurt blinked at her unexpected question.  
  
“No.” He shook his head. “I can’t right now.”  
  
“Then don’t. Readiness comes differently for each of us, but there are things you should know nevertheless…” He waited when she did not immediately continue. When her eyes glanced downward, pausing briefly on a spot just below where his arms were crossed, he was filled with trepidation.  
  
“Lina,” he warned but the woman, reaching up instinctively as if he might actually plug his ears so that he didn’t have to hear whatever she had to say, but Lina grasped his arms and forced him to lower them.  
  
“I know you’re afraid of it Kurt, and I am perhaps the only one here who can understand just how much but that is exactly why I insist you listen.” He huffed trying unsuccessfully to pull away from her as somehow the tiny omega woman dragged him to the edge of the circle, away from the curious eyes of others.  
  
When they were no longer in the middle of everyone she turned to him, her eyes pleading as she whispered, “I don’t know what it’s like for you, being a man and facing the prospect of bearing a child. I’m sure it isn’t pleasant…” Kurt snorted.  
  
“To say the least.”  
  
“When I was pregnant with Benito I had my share of fears,” Lina pressed on like he hadn’t spoken. “James had made me different but I had no idea how. I wasn’t even sure what _he_ was, let alone what I was or the child would be. I did not know if I could love it when… when I had been through so much, or if it turned out to be a monster. And when I did decide to keep It I had to fear my husband killing the both of us if he found out about it. There wasn’t a minute without fear, Kurt, and it was only worse after I thought I’d killed my mate… because our cubs need certain things to grow and I could not give Beni those things on my own."  
  
“Okay. I-I get it.” Kurt struggled not to squirm. “But I don’t even know if I’m having one. Why can’t we talk about it when I know for sure?”  
  
“And when will that be?” She asked in what Kurt was sure was a patented tone all mothers were taught as she crossed her arms. “Do you know how to tell?”  
  
“Blaine does,” Kurt mumbled in response, his ears going red and Lina arched a questioning brow at him.  
  
“Blaine? The mate you’re currently not talking to? Seems silly to rely on him to tell you when—”  
  
“Okay! I got that too.” Kurt relented, irritation mounting along with his embarrassment at the grin he could see Lina trying to hide. “So how do I tell?”  
  
“Blaine has probably touched on some of the physical indicators. Your scent will change as the cub grows but it won’t really become prominent until the cub is much farther along so that is not a good method to rely on. The thing you really need to watch for now that you’ve been through a heat is your bleeding.”  
  
“My bleeding?”  
  
“Yes, Kurt you know that females bleed once a month and the why of it. It’s not much different here. Though don’t be shocked if there’s a lot more blood. Your male body has a lot more tissue to be rid of than the average female in order to set you back to rights.”  
  
“Oh… well… that’s sufficiently terrifying. Can we be done now please?”  
  
“ _If_ you don’t have a bleeding in the next week Kurt you can safely assume that you’re carrying. Don’t be fooled by your body temporarily giving you back your proper genitalia, some males get it back for a while and others don’t until the cub is born. The bleeding is the only way to know for sure. If you carry, you’re going to be producing a lot of different hormones that Blaine is going to respond to. You won’t like others touching you so Blaine won’t let them. He might become suspicious and overly territorial and you’ll want to start nesting. You’re going to be driven to find the safest warmest little corner to have your cubs and you won’t like others entering that space either. You’ll need to eat more and your body will tire easily. You’ll eventually lose the ability to shift when the cub is big enough to be harmed by it.”  
  
Kurt’s head was swimming trying to imagine everything that Lina was saying and simultaneously trying _not_ to imagine it all. Lina rubbed his arm and touched his chin, gently guiding him to look back at her.  
  
“There's a lot more but I suppose we can cover that when it becomes necessary. What you need to understand right now is how you, as well as your relationship with your mate, will effect the cub."  
  
"Lina I'm not _leaving_ Blaine," he tried to assure her. "We'll work it out long before... well long before." Kurt couldn't bring himself to say long before the cub arrives because he still rather desperately hoped he wasn't having one and saying that would have made it a bit too real. Lina sighed at him with a short shake of her head.  
  
"Listen closely to me piccolo. It is difficult to say when a collection of cells becomes a person, but our mental gifts give us a special advantage. You’ll know when your cub begins to think and feel Kurt. It’s…I can’t describe it, but it’s a beautiful thing to know that they are alive within you, aware of you, learning of you from everything that you think and feel. The bond between you and your cub is like any other lycan bond, intense and wholly necessary for their well being. Your stress is their stress, your pain is their pain, and they simply do not grow well when their bonds are turbulent… or when the bond with one parent is severed,” Lina explained. Her voice wavered at the end and Kurt knew she was thinking about what it had been like for her.  
  
“On my own, desperate… thinking I had killed James, my pregnancy wasn’t easy,” she confirmed. “There were times when I did not think either Benito or I would make it… there’s no agony like feeling your child slipping away from you. I would beg him to stay with me... to be brave for me. He always has been brave my Beni. I like to think we made it together. And so will you and your cub when you have one.”  
  
He couldn’t imagine it. Imagining someone else sharing his body was enough to have him breaking out in a cold sweat, but imagining hearing his child’s first thoughts, feeling their first emotions… he couldn’t even fathom that. Would it happen all at once like a light switch coming on? Was a person suddenly sentient like a cosmic bang or did they become a person in slow degrees, a pleasant surprise when you realized they were there in their entirety?  
  
Lina smiled at him and shook her head at his unspoken questions.  
  
“There is an unspoken code among us carriers that we do not spoil it for the others. It’s a journey for you, your mate and your little one… though from my understanding Blaine will not be able to feel it as keenly as you do. You will share it with him of course but it’s different when you’re the carrier… you’ll always be the first thing your child knew.”  
  
To his surprise Kurt felt a smile, tremulous but growing brighter by the moment, not quite able to let go of the wondrous prospect as they stood grinning at each other. It was strange to be feeling joy, even such simple joy as thinking about getting to know a child who may or may not exist, in the face of the grief surrounding them and the terror of the night to come but he was so glad for it he didn’t care. It helped him think past the fear for just a moment and remember that he actually _wanted_ kids. He wanted them with Blaine.  
  
Kurt closed his eyes and let his head rest against Lina’s her smooth brow nuzzling his as he breathed in and out, letting the tension melt from his body.  
  
“Thank you… that helped a little. A lot actually.”  
  
“I’m glad. I do not doubt that you will be afraid again before the end but it is good to think on the bright side. Ci?” Kurt grinned.  
  
“Ci.”  
  
“I must ask you something”. He was still chuckling when Lina spoke again. “Tonight… I know that you’re coming for my sake. You’ll worry about Blaine whether you want to admit it or not but he is capable of taking care of himself. It’s me you’re coming to protect.”  
  
“Are you going to ask me not to? You shouldn’t bother. I won’t listen.”  
  
“I know. Though you should. ” Lina poked him in the side and he smiled down at her. “I want your promise that you’ll take care of Benito. He must be with us at the house but, Kurt, what if they find him?! He knows how to hide, I thought it necessary for him to learn, but if he feels me hurt he may not be able to resist revealing himself… Kurt he’s so young, he’s… ”  
  
Lina didn’t finish. Her lip wobbled and Kurt saw her bite it, desperate to get herself back under control as she turned away. Her eyes seemed to instinctively go to the rock looming over their heads and Kurt quickly saw the reason why a moment later.  
  
Blaine still sat upon it watching over the pack as they mourned together but he was no longer alone. A small black cub had joined him, sitting between his paws. He was mimicking the larger wolf’s noble seat, playing sentinel as his tiny mouth opened on a fierce yawn.  
  
Kurt was not ready to admit it but he was glad that Blaine was not alone up there anymore.  
  
“He’s your baby,” Kurt finished for her.  
  
“Still… I shouldn’t ask you to risk yours.”  
  
“Why?” This time he was the one who got to use the ‘I love you but you’re being an idiot’ tone. “We don’t even know I’m carrying yet and Benito is a three year old being hunted by a bunch of murderers. I know what my priority is right now.”  
  
“Just be careful… I wouldn’t forgive myself if—”  
  
“If something happened to _Benito_ you wouldn’t forgive yourself. I wouldn’t be okay with myself either and neither would Blaine.” Kurt insisted nodded towards the pair on pride-rock. “Look at them they’re… connected. I know Blaine isn’t his father but he and Benito were meant for each other, clearly. They love each other. We love the both of you. You’re family as far as I’m concerned.”  
  
Lina stared at him in shock and Kurt almost blushed again but he just nodded, taking the woman’s hand and holding it tightly within his. He’d meant every word. Lina was his. Kurt’s wolf had been unsettled by the way Benito smelled like Blaine at first but he had come to accept it the closer he and Blaine got because what was Blaine’s was his and likewise. Dangerous or not Lina and Benito belonged to them. It was one thing he knew he and Blaine could agree on right now; nobody was going to threaten them. Not on their turf.  
  
Kurt couldn’t fight for one part of his family right now. That was out of his hands for the time being. He could however fight for this one. He had every intention.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, 300 years later right? I want to thank those reading for sticking with this story and my busy schedule. You guys are gems. I also wanted to thank those who commented on the last chapter here, on A03 and on tumblr. You have no idea what you mean to me some days. I'll continue to try to get to all of your questions. Speaking of, during our unplanned 3week hiatus I had some questions regarding Lina,Arthur, and Blaine's genealogy. I have added Lina to the character sheet on my LJ. As for Arthur, some have noticed that not much has been done in Arthur's POV in our first life flashbacks. That's definitely intentional. :) Important for this story were two things: setting up the world, and emphasizing Kurt's journey to Blaine's side and his place in the pack. The flashbacks to their first lives parallel that, setting up the world and emphasizing Gwyn's rise and fall (we've all pretty much tagged who Kurt and Blaine were in their first lives right?). We'll get to see Arthur's side of things more in the second story when the search for Arthur begins. Next up? Sebastian attacks Westerville! James and his vampire crew are on their way and is Kurt REALY going to be able to handle it when it's confirmed his family was abducted?


	30. Chapter 28: The Brink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one with the battle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Individual chapter warning: Heavy violence. Gruesome and potentially triggery imagery. Sexually explicit language that may prove triggery. As always please reach out to me for details or any concerns regarding these warnings.

_Isolde had asked her mother once how she bore living with her father and suffering his violent moods. Her mother had looked up from her needle work and said “I bare it because there is no other choice but to bare it. A woman can might defy her husband and shirk her duties, but a mother is not a free woman and a Queen is a mother to all who call her queen.”_

_At sixteen summers the words had angered her. She’d thought she knew the world then, and suffering her mother’s fate was everything she'd ever prayed against. Once Arthur and her father had arranged her marriage to Marke she'd vowed that she would do anything to avoid it._

_And now... well now she rode to him, the man she loved stone faced and silent as the grave beside her._

_“Can you not even look at me?” She beseeched Tristan, mindful of the trail of knights and noblemen around them, and the mounted knight answered her in body if not in word. He did not so much as turn his head in her direction, his plush mouth tightening into an ever thinning line._

_Irritated Isolde huffed turning away with reluctance as the urge to cry welled up within her. She blinked honeyed lashes and wished the stinging in her eyes to the devil. She was a woman grown, a queen, and she was not about to sob like a ninny with Arthur and Queen Guinevere naught ten feet away. Especially not in front of Guinevere who she had come to respect and whose respect she had somehow managed to earn in return. Just as she could never forget the words of her mother she would never forget the words she and Guinevere had traded at Joyous Garde too short a time ago._

_She had received the Queen in the garden, and Basina had organized a meal for them. Guinevere had rejected the offering of sweet wine and called instead for a cup of the houses finest ale and Isolde had become wary for the Queen could be accused of many oddities but a hard head for drink was not one of them._

_“Forgive me, but with the kingdom at war I find it hard to stomach watery wine. The war with Ireland drags on and every day sons are lost under both banners,” the Queen had said and Isolde had hummed but offered no other indication of agreement. She had been wary; Guinevere was not one to engage in idle chat and it meant quite a great deal that she had risked injury to herself to seek a private audience with Isolde that day._

_“That is the way of wars,” Isolde had murmured taking a sip of her own wine and Guinevere’s gaze had fixed on her, sharp and brilliant blue like wizard’s fire._

_“Do you know who feels the weight of wars the most? It’s never the kings who declare them or the soldiers who wage them. It’s the common folk. The people starve, their homes are pillaged, their livelihoods trodden under the feet of armies and King’s will say ‘that is the way of war’. Rather easy for them to say don’t you think, it’s always their war. If a King is any king at all Isolde he seeks peace wherever he can find it.” The Queen had paused and Isolde had nodded for a reply had been expected, but inside she had felt the air being pushed from her lungs, as if the walls of the castle were pressing in close to crush her._

_“Arthur seeks peace?”_

_“I will not mince words with you Isolde. There can be no peace between Arthur and your kin because you are the daughter of their king. You are a symbol to them and your marriage to Arthur’s vassal is a symbol of good faith between your land and their overlord. They will not cease their beating on the war drums until they feel he will no longer mistreat you.”_

_“Is it so easy to forget that he did?” Isolde had snapped in reply having guessed what Guinevere had come to ask of her. The Queen had wished her to return to a jealous husband who had attempted to have her thrown into the tower to await trial for death when last she had seen him._

_“He beat you?” Guinevere had asked with a dark brow arched and Isoldes cheeks had flushed pink at the woman's forthright discussion of what was a forbidden topic at court, though she did not know why she was not used to it after all the time she had spent in Guinevere’s presence. “You would of course not lie to me Isolde, for I would have a hard time believing you misspoke. You know too well what a woman’s life is like beneath a heavy handed husband.”_

_“No he did not.” She'd begrudgingly admitted. For all of Marke’s faults he had never raised a hand to her himself. Isolde could not lie about that and the Queen knew damn well what wounds she poked with her words. “And you need not fear that I speak true, for I know how you abhor liars Your Grace. One wonders how you can stand the truth always leaping from your tongue.” She regretted the words almost as swiftly as they leaped from her tongue but rather than become riled at her bold speech Guinevere had smiled, one corner of her mouth turning up._

_“Sheathe your claws kitten. I am not your enemy.”_

_“Are you my friend Your Grace? It is a funny friend who would ask me to forsake my happiness.”_

_“Aye, did no one ever tell you that royals make the worst friends Isolde?”_

_Guinevere’s words had surprised a laugh out of her. For a moment the two had shared their laughter, for in Guinevere Isolde knew there was a like mind and a shared burden. It did not take wizards fire for the princess of Ireland to know the truth of the Queen of Camelot’s burdens. They were not so unlike each other._

_“Aye we are not,” the Queen had answered her thoughts in the way of the were-kin. “I have always admired you Isolde.”_

_“Me Your Grace?” Isolde blinked at her in shock. Guinevere was the most beautiful woman in the land and far from that Isolde feared her to be the most clever. She had never known a woman with the Queen’s strength or the sharpness of her mind. Why would Guinevere admire her? “Have you not heard? I am the woman too prideful to return to her husband and fulfill her duty to him. I am the witch and adulteress who somehow enchanted the King and tricked the wizard’s fire. I am the coward who hides behind sir Lancelot so that I might dally in sin with my lover while war rips through the countryside and my name is chanted on the breath of dying men. Why admire me?”_

_“I told you once that you were very brave. You are, but that is not the reason I admire you. Any idiot with a sword can be brave but cleverness is harder to come by. You saved your life and that of your lover and managed to find a way for both of you to be happy and free together. Do you think that a small thing?”_

_“Were it true, most would call it treason Your Grace.”_

_“Aye, but most people are fools.”_

_Isolde had said nothing, for there had been nothing to say. Nothing that was not treason and could not later come back to haunt her, but she had felt for Guinevere. Hers was not the only name the ladies of the court drug through the mud. They were more careful when it came to the Queen for none of them wished to hang for an ill word against their monarch, threat of death had never stopped gossip before and it never would._

_It was well known that Sir Lancelot was in love with the Queen, one had only to watch the man watching her to know the truth of it. It was not known for certain whether the Queen returned that love, but Isolde had always believed that she did. Living at Joyous Garde it had not escaped her notice that the boy Galahad bore a resemblance to the house of Gwent, to Guinevere herself._

_No… they were not so different from each other. And yet Guinevere would ask this terrible thing from her; the end of her happiness._

_“You’ve never been a foolish girl Isolde,” Guinevere had broken the silence stretching heavy between them. “That is why you will return to your husband. Because only a fool lets her people fall for the sake of her own happiness.”_

_In the end her mother had been right. Isolde only wished her mother was there now to tell her how one kept moving forward when their heart was torn in two._

_It is said that the Princess of Ireland often came back to her lady mother’s words in the years that followed. She would be remembered for a noble woman and a good queen to the people of Kenrow but it was in truth little comfort to watching Tristan marry another and knowing that he despised her._

_In Guinevere she always had a friend but the Queen’s advice had its own truth. Royals make for the worst friends._

_The lovers pined for each other, both of them living for their duty and dreaming of the other. When Arthur’s vassals, led by Sir Mordred, rebelled against him King Marke was among them. Isolde, learning of Marke’s plot to see to Tristan’s death, fled her husband’s home for a second time in hope of reaching the battlefield in time to warn him but she encountered many dangers on the way. By the time the Lady Isolde arrived at Sir Tristan’s side he was already dying._

_It is said that Isolde begged him not to die that day, for she could not bear knowing that he had died hating her. It is also said that before he breathed his last Sir Tristan touched the face of the woman he loved and said these words._

_“Forgive me. If I had a thousand lives to live I would never love any but you… if I had but one more I would choose you. Forgive me my love, for I did not. I did not... I did not.”_

~*~*~  
The Alpha stood on the rock above them and all around Calvin conversation slowly died as all eyes turned to Blaine who stared down at them with golden eyes. He tipped his head back and howled, the sound stopping Calvin’s breath and gripping at something in the center of his body. He leaned back and closed his eyes, thinking about David and Flint, about his sister Clara, about all of the warm bodies pressed around him and how lost and little he felt and he howled.

They all howled, singing until their voices were hoarse and the fires had begun to die down. The dying of the fire meant that the time for mourning was over. David and Flint were already gone and now not even their bodies remained. The sun would rise in the morning and a wolf must go on.

When the last of the singing had faded Blaine turned on the rock and disappeared into the darkness. Calvin knew that the funeral singing and the whole pack being together was supposed to be comforting but he couldn’t be comforted like the others. He knew bad things were about to happen. Even now the guard was breaking off into sections, not a one of them wandering aimlessly or moving without some previously dedicated purpose. The den mothers were rounding them up with too much haste. Kurt and Lina were trying to act like nothing was wrong, Lina fetching Benito and the two whispering quietly with each other and walking in the direction towards town; but there was tenseness to Kurt’s shoulders and a grimness to his walk that was telling.

Kurt and Blaine had just mated and yet he was walking off with Lina. Wes wasn’t leaving with Blaine, instead he was carting Jeff back to the house and Calvin heard him say, “... not going because we can’t trust you! Your loyalties are spilt, ergo you have no business fighting with the guard!” as they passed. 

Calvin shivered, uneasy now that he knew that Jeff wasn’t going to be with the guard when Sebastian attacked. He needed Jeff to be there. Jeff was the only one Calvin knew who might care enough to not want to see the MacTere killed for their crimes and it wasn’t much but it was something. Nick said Sebastian didn’t really care about him but then again Nick and Jeff always said they didn’t care about each other and that was the biggest load of baloney Calvin had ever heard. So maybe Nick was just saying that to keep Calvin away from the fight. But the thing was Sebastian could die. Somebody would that night, Calvin could feel it in his bones. They all could.

“Phineas, Luke, Calvin!” Calvin snapped to attention, Den Mother Tasha’s dark glower warning him to be prompt as she waved the three lagging boys over. “Hurry up you three. Tonight is not a night for lolly gaging, or any of your adventures!” She warned direly. “Tonight you must do as you’re told.”

Luke and Phineas nodded in agreement but Calvin didn’t bother saying anything. He had no intention at all of doing what he was told.

~**~*~

“The others are in place. You and Lina should start heading for the house.”

Kurt looked up from the hand game he was playing with Benito (Kurt would hold out his palms and the boy would try to slap them before Kurt could yank them away) to stare at Blaine who had somehow managed to come upon them silently despite his bare feet. There wasn’t a move that Blaine made that Kurt wasn’t aware of somewhere in the back of his mind. He was like an extra limb, busy in the background while his mind worried on other things, sometimes distant but never apart. 

His body didn’t like the distance. It made that clear through the itching of his skin, the constant craving for touch that he felt. The stress he felt on his psyche because the need to be close to Blaine had somehow moved from personal desire to biological necessity in his mind and convincing the rest of him it wasn’t true was a thankless task. 

And still Kurt clenched his teeth and did not reach for him. He didn’t get up and run into his arms or touch all of that smooth olive skin on display, he just nodded to show that he’d heard. 

“Once you’re inside the house stay there” Blaine instructed. “Ian will be watching. The minute the MacTere make a move we’ll move on them. You, Lina, and Benito should be fine.”

_‘But you might not be’_. The thought wouldn’t leave his head no matter how hard he tried to suppress it or tell himself that the guard would protect their Alpha and that Blaine had the situation well in hand. Battle was battle. Anything could happen. 

His fingers twitched. Kurt curled them. 

“Kurt under no circumstances are you to leave the house… even to try and help me. I know you’re angry with me now but you still love me…” Kurt hated how open ended Blaine made that sound. He made it sound like a question instead of a statement and for a moment he was furious; because if Blaine Anderson thought for one second that Kurt would be here in this forest while his family was god only knew where, doing what he was told like a dutiful little boy, if he didn’t love Blaine something stupid well then he was just… he was…

“Stupid?” Blaine finished for him and Kurt felt the faint bubble of laughter within him, saw the way humor lit up his hazel eyes for the briefest of moments and his lips tilted in a small hopeful smile. The anger bled away, replaced by something Kurt couldn’t name and maybe cousin to longing.

“Right, well I might have been a bit stupid about this” Blaine admitted. “But you still love me and you’ll still want to protect me if something goes wrong. Don’t. Okay? Don’t leave the house.”

“Is that an order?” he asked and Blaine flinched, the softness slowly fading from his eyes.

“Do I have to make it one?”

Kurt wanted to tell Blaine that he didn’t _have_ to do anything, that he was choosing not to trust Kurt to make the right choices but he bit his tongue. There wasn’t time for it now and he didn’t want to fight with him right before they were attacked. He had no idea what to expect, but if Sebastian fought anything like Blaine fought when he was serious about it people were going to get hurt. Someone could die. Someone most likely would. Blaine could.

“No. You don’t,” he answered. He only wished Blaine didn’t have to ask. 

His eyes had begun to sting and Kurt blinked them slowly looking anywhere but at Blaine or Lina and Benito who were trying to give them as much privacy as being only a few inches away could afford. He couldn’t bring himself to watch Blaine walk away just then. It was like having someone cut him open and pull out one of his bones.

_Stop him. Don’t let him go. Not without you. He needs you._

He felt the wolf inside him pacing, rippling under his skin, his heart picking up speed as the seconds ticked by. When Blaine finally said his name Kurt heard the plea in it. Blaine needed the closeness as much as Kurt needed it. Blaine didn’t want to leave him. Blaine _couldn’t_ leave him with such distance between them. Kurt… Kurt didn’t want him to.

He stood to his feet, no longer able to resist reaching for Blaine and they shared the same mind because even as Kurt was reaching to pull him close Blaine’s hands settled at his waist and his body bent perfectly into the kiss Kurt bestowed on him as if it had been choreographed.

Kurt kissed him breathless, until his lungs demanded air and he was forced to pull away. Blaine chased his lips their heads knocking together just the slightest and Kurt grinned. Blaine grinned slowly back his gaze never leaving Kurt’s, warm and honeyed as they felt the bond between them open up once more, twining around them both like string.

_“Maybe I’m mad. But I love you.”_ Kurt thought, watching Blaine’s lashes lower as he watched Kurt’s lips tremble with his breaths. When he raised his glance again Kurt saw every ounce of love he felt reflected back at him.

_“Something stupid?”_  
Kurt huffed a quiet laugh, leaning down to place a far more chaste kiss upon his lovers lips, his hand coming up to tenderly cradle the side of Blaine’s face.

“Yeah, Blaine, something stupid.”

~*~*~*~

Jeff threw himself against the bars of his door but no matter how he snarled and snapped his teeth at them or threw his wait against them the bars would not budge. The window was similarly barred. The safe house was built to keep heat mad wolves confined to their rooms and other heat mad lycan’s out, which coincidently made it a good place to house anyone waiting on punishment. That didn’t happen too often because the pack tended to deal with insubordination quickly and physically and betrayal was usually met with death; but things happened where the Alpha needed to make a decision regarding someone’s fate and for whatever reason he couldn’t deal with it right away.

Things like Jeff. The young wolf threw himself again, slamming his full weight against the iron and sliding to the stone floor with a pain filled pant.

_“Wes!”_ he shouted over their bond, frustrated by the distance between them, the icy mental wall Wes hid behind. _“Wes please let me out. Please… please..”_

Jeff reared back, his sandy pelt glistening with sweat and blood from his repeated attempts at battering the door down, as he turned in frantic circles whining like the most pathetic of dogs before throwing back his head and howling.

_Nick!_ Jeff reached but of course there was no answer. He was too far away.

The clock was ticking. The MacTere would attack. The guard would kill them. Jeff didn’t care… shouldn’t care… but not Nick. _Protect_ , must protect Nick. _Always_. God he’d tried, tried so hard not to love him but he did, he had always, and he couldn’t let Nick die. He couldn’t! He didn’t know if he’d survive it.

It was terrifying to think that he could love someone so deeply they’d follow each other anywhere, even to death, especially someone so wrong for him, someone he’d told himself over and over again he didn’t love. He’d said it from the beginning, all the way up to that night on the full moon at the pub in town when Nick had tried to get him into bed again only that time… that time he’d been weak.

_“You’re enough to make a guy want to tear his hair out Sterling. I almost wish I was one of you pack dogs. Cause then you’d have no excuse. You want to be a good little guard dog so bad you don’t even stop to ask why they ask you to bark. Don’t you ever get tired of rolling over?”_

_“Funny words coming from the guy trying to get me on my back.”_

_“It is funny… truth is I want you on your back, on your belly, over, under and all around me. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything and you’re all wrong for me. I can’t have you, Sebastian keeps telling me that… I know it and yet I know that if I had you just once you’d never choose anything but me.”_

_“Is that a dare Duval?”_

_“It’s a promise.”_  
~*~*~*~

Staying at the house was the one perk to having the school shut down. It made slipping away from the group once they were all filing through the front doors of the manor house much easier. Calvin had a lot of experience squeezing himself into small corners and hiding in broom closets but this time around he couldn’t seem to get calm. His heart was beating like a rabbits in his chest and he was so sure that any one of the horde of students passing by his hiding place would hear it.

When the last of them had gone he waited, counting under his breath back and forth from one to sixty three times before he slowly opened the closet door an allowed himself to peek around at the empty hall. Seeing no one he quickly left his hiding place behind him, heading quickly in the direction of the infirmary. There was only one safe place to lock up a wolf and only four people that Calvin knew for sure would have keys to the doors: Blaine, Wes, Allie and Quinn. There was no getting them from Blaine’s room, or from Wes and Allie either but Calvin knew for a fact that Quinn stored her keys in her desk when she was busy with patients. A little distraction like… Calvin furrowed his brow as he thought… like a fire? No, not in the infirmary it was too close to Quinn’s science stuff and somebody might actually get hurt. _Think think think Calvin think_ … he almost skidded to a halt as an idea came to him.

He didn’t have to do it in the infirmary. He could do it anywhere, just a small one in a trash can somewhere. Just enough to set off the alarms and make the place smell like smoke. The house would erupt in chaos trying to figure out where it was, and how to get everyone out. A few moments of chaos were all Calvin needed.

~*~*~

Thaddeus Harwood had been circling the Medici woman’s block for the greater part of the afternoon which, despite the danger of being caught, was probably about the most boring detail he’d ever been assigned to. There wasn’t much cover like the night they’d gone in to steel that photo for the vampire, Thad stuck to two legs. There wasn’t much cover on the street and in the end a lone man out for a walk was far less conspicuous than a wolf.

By night fall he was out of body spray and his nose was practically numb. There had been some excitement earlier in the evening when the whole damn neighborhood had packed up and headed for the woods. Thad had reported it to Sebastian, thinking it was a good time to get inside the Medici bitch’s house and lay a trap for her but Sebastian had insisted somebody would smell something and he wasn’t ballsy enough to risk doing anything that might tip the pack dogs off.

He was going soft Sebastian, him and Duval both. First Sebastian making a deal with that nut case fang boy and then Duval with that kid, and that bratty cub that Sebastian let hang off of his tail was just the icing on the damn cake. They were becoming a joke and Thad had never had much of a sense of humor. One way or another they were going to kill that bitch and hit Anderson where it hurt tonight or he wasn’t Thaddeus Gregory Harwood the sixth.

The sound of quiet voices coming up the street made him straighten up on a dime but he remembered himself just as quickly, slouching his shoulders and letting the cap he war obscure a proper view of his face. The people were coming back from wherever they had been in small clusters, talking in hushed voices and moving with brisk steps eager to get to their beds. 

They spotted him dallying on the corner and they glared with their eyes brimming with mistrust but none approached him.

“Typical,” he huffed under his breath. “Dogs can’t even protect their own territory without daddy’s say so.”

Another pair of hushed voices coming up the road pricked his ears and Thad’s heart leaped in his chest, waiting for it, hardly daring to hope after hours of waiting and _yes_!

“There you are,” he whispered to himself as he watched Lina Medici walk up the road toward the little house she called home. She wasn’t alone either. She had the kid on her arm and Hummel was with her. They both eyed him warily as they passed and a pleasing scent tickled Thad’s nostrils. Something a bit faded, but still warm and inviting. He found himself leaning closer, his nose twitching, without really thinking about it. Only once Hummel was out of range did he catch himself. The fuck? Hummel must have just come through a heat. That could prove a problem.

~*~*~*~

“Hummel’s with her?” Sebastian demanded and Thad nodded. 

“That’s a problem,” Duval muttered and Thad sneered at him.

“Do teenagers _and_ converts frighten you now Duval?”

“It’s a problem idiot because he’s Blaine’s mate!” Nick retorted. “The second he’s in danger Anderson will know it.”

“So what?” Hunter said and turned to spit. “We came for blood. I wouldn’t mind having Anderson’s mate between my teeth. I couldn’t think of a sweeter way to die.”

“Some of us aren’t looking to die Clarington!”

“Didn’t you hear Sebastian earlier today Nicolas?” Hunter shot right back. “We don’t fear death. We are MacTere! You used to understand that. But maybe that blond bitch of yours has tamed you. Funny, I thought he bent over for you and not the other—” Nick’s fist connected with Hunter’s cheek before he could finish and in a moment they were in each other’s face, snarling with jaws and fangs extending as their bodies tried to shift. 

“Quiet! Both of you.” Sebastian snapped and Thad and Cameron pulled the two men away from each other. “Nick is right Hunter, Hummel’s presence is a problem.”

“You said it didn’t matter if Anderson came,” Thad reminded him bitterly. “You said we’d spill blood from here to Italy if we had to in order to avenge our families!”

“Use your head Thad! Has no one stopped to wonder just what the fuck Hummel is doing there?”

That made Thad pause, not because he got Sebastian’s point but because he didn’t and he had clearly missed something. He hated that.

“Your pet puppy said they were friends,” Thad muttered, referring to that annoying kid Sebastian had insisted they let hang around. 

Sebastian turned and gave him such a chilling look that Thad shrank back, his head bowing downward.

“This morning the whole town was talking about one thing, the fact that Blaine finally got off his ass and bit his useless fuck toy. A second ago you were warning all of us to stuff our noses so we don’t get distracted trying to kill him because he’s just been through a heat…” Sebastian paused looking around at all of their silent faces. When nobody caught his thought pattern he growled, “What the fuck is he doing outside? Why the fuck isn’t he with Blaine getting his ass fucked six ways to Sunday?!”

Realization dawned then. None of them had ever mated before but they’d seen it happen. New mates were never far from each other the first day, maybe not even the second, not until the bond settled. They couldn’t be. Wherever Kurt was his alpha wouldn’t be far which could only mean one thing.

“They know,” Cameron guessed, fear strangling his voice and Thad bit back a roar of frustration.

“It changes nothing.”

“It changes everything,” Sebastian retorted. Thad opened his mouth to accuse him of cowardice, to remind him of what the Andersons and the Guild had done to their people but not a sound escaped when Sebastian’s eyes met his and the force of his dominance pushed against Thad’s mind like a heavy hand. He winced, lowering his head again and closing his mouth.

“We came here to avenge our clan, not to rush into a battle we can’t win and die for nothing,” Sebastian reminded them all and Thad surely wasn’t the only one who felt the way relief washed over Nick like a tidal wave. “So let’s make sure we do what we came to do. If Anderson’s there when we try to go in it’ll be over before it even starts.”

“Sebastian he knows! He’ll be there,” Nick insisted.

“Then we’ve got to give him a reason not to be there.”

“There isn’t a reason good enough to leave his mate alone!”

“That’s where your wrong, Duval.” Sebastian turned on the shorter darker haired lycan. “You want to know why we call the Anderson’s guard dogs? Because the Guild uses them to guard their interests. You want to know what the guild doesn’t like? They don’t like it when humans start dying. I’d say people but we all know they don’t give a shit how many of _us_ die, so long as one of their precious humans doesn’t get gobbled up by the big bad wolf.”

Sebastian was right about that. The Guild always stepped in when there was danger of upsetting the humans; they were always so worried about breaking that fucking treaty. 

“Blaine is expecting us to attack the house but we’re not going to do that. At least not all of us. We’re going to go somewhere nice and public and start painting this town red in a way they’ll never forget. Blaine’s a good dog so he knows his duty. He’ll come. I guarantee it. ” Sebastian grinned as a murmur of excitement went through the crowd of men and women gathered behind Mal’s bar (the only one in town). He looked straight at Nick then, his eyes burning a bright gold.

“Stop mewling for your life. It’s over. I’ll kill you now if you’ve forgotten who you are and what we fight for. Or you can come with me and take back the dignity the Anderson’s stole from us. We’ll leave them with a scar they’ll never forget and they’ll always fear the name of MacTere.” Sebastian was leaning so close to Nick the two men were sharing breath. With a cruel smile their Alpha finished with, “It’s your choice Duval. Now choose.” 

~*~*~~*~

Lina heard Kurt shut the door behind her and only then did she allow herself to close her eyes, but only just for a moment. Just a slow blink as she fought the beginnings of panic bubbling up in her. She couldn’t give in to the fear. Not now. _Not ever_ she reminded herself. Omega she might be but there was no mate for her to take control and put the world in order, no dom to put _her_ back together if she fell apart. 

“That guy outside…” Kurt said from over by the door. He had pulled the curtains in the little window aside just the tiniest bit to peer outside. “I think he was one of them. He smelled like Axe. I think I’d remember that smell anywhere after last time.” Lina did not say anything in response. She knew he was right.

“Mama,” Benito whispered conspiratorially into her ear. “You’re scared.”

Fighting for calm Lina smiled for him.

“I am, but that is only better for the game. Are you ready to play Beni?”

“Lions?” He asked, his eyes brightening with hope. “Is Blaine coming?”

“Ci piccolo Blaine is coming but not to play lions with you. Not this time.”

“What game are we playing then?” He stuck his plump bottom lip out in a pout and Lina was so overcome with the need to hug him to herself and breathe in his sweet scent that she did, rubbing her cheek against his silky black curls. Moving towards the back of the house Lina quietly began to prepare her son for what was to come.

“We’re going to play hide and seek. Do you remember mamma teaching you how to play that?” She waited for the boy to nod. He did, but there was no missing the darkness that sprang up inside his tiny center, the fear and the dread. “It’s easy, piccolo. You get into your hiding place and mamma will find you when the bad guys are gone. Now what are the other rules?”

“Don’t wanna play,” he mumbled in reply and she nipped his ear in reprimand. “Owe! Mamma stop.”

“Be a good boy. What are the other rules, Beni?”

“No making noise and no thinking loud.”

“And?”

“No coming out no matter what.”

“That’s mamma’s good boy. You want to be good don’t you Beni?” 

“Ci mamma,” Benito nodded earnestly, his small fists clutching the front of her shirt.

“Mamma is always so proud of you. You know that don’t you? I’ll always be proud of you.” They’d reached the bottom of the attic stares and Benito was staring at her with wide wet eyes, his bottom lip quivering. He was small but quick witted. He was too close to her emotions not to know when something was wrong and Lina was not doing a very good job just then at not being afraid to let him go. 

Kurt put a hand on her back and just that tiny touch was like an anchor. She was ashamed at how much she needed it. She felt like she’d fly to pieces if he let her go now.

“Mamma?” Benito questioned nervously. His thoughts were racing so fast that they were almost little more than a shrill whistling in the back of her mind.

“Shh, Piccolo, remember the rules. You don’t want to lose do you?” Benito pressed a finger to his lips, the tips of his small ears flushing pink with contrition. Lina nuzzled his nose, squeezing him tightly one last time before she set him down on his feet. “Go upstairs with Kurt and show him how good a hider you are.” At her words the little boy turned to consider Kurt, his blue eyes curious as they swept over the older man. 

“Are you gonna play with me?” he asked and Lina was so grateful to her friend for the way that he smiled brightly at Bentio and played along.

“Not this round. I’m a terrible hider. Can I watch you do it so I can be all ready for next time?”

“Uh huh,” Benito slipped his hand into Kurt’s, the fear inside of him draining away as he got caught up in the excitement of teaching Kurt how to play the special game his mother had taught him. “Mama built a spot just for me. I’ll show you how it works and you can watch but no sounds okay?”

Lina watched them disappear up the narrow flight of stairs into the attic, her ears not needing to strain to pick up on her sons excited chatter. She prayed for a moment that he would heed her warnings and not make a sound. Taking a deep breath she closed the door behind them. A second later she heard a scream.

~*~*~*~

Kurt could smell the spices from the bottom of the attack stairs. The scent of cinnamon, rosemary, and sage got stronger and stronger the closer they got to the attack door and that was the reason why Kurt did not know the man leaning against the other side of the door was there until he’d pulled it open and a large unidentified shape came spilling out.

Kurt yelped in surprise, yanking a screaming Benito into his arms and flattening himself against the wall, almost falling down the stairs himself as the lurker in the attic went crashing down them. The figure hit the door to the stairwell and groaned just as Lina yanked it open again, her hair standing on end and her teeth bared.

“Kurt?!” She called, frantic, and Kurt called back, assuring her that he and Benito were fine. 

“I’m fine too, thanks,” a familiar voice grumbled from his crumpled heap at Lina’s feet. “Just fell down a flight of stairs. No biggie.”

“Chandler?” Kurt gaped at the teen as he sat up, wincing with each movement. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m here to help! I climbed up the back of the house so no one would see me, only that door doesn’t have a handle on the inside. You guys walk way too slow. I’ve been stuck up there for like an hour.” When neither Kurt nor Lina had a response for him he rolled his eyes and climbed gingerly to his feet. “Gee Chan, thanks for coming to help us out. We need all the help we can get. No, guy’s really, stop, I insist. It was nothing,” he pantomimed and Benito giggled, hiding his face against Kurt’s neck.

“Hardly nothing,” Kurt mused and at Chandler’s attempt to look innocent he gave him a droll look. “I can smell Adam all over you Chandler and even if I didn’t have such a precise nose I know you. You wouldn’t willingly choose to leave his side in a fight. Blaine ordered you here didn’t he?”

The teenager opened his mouth as if he might protest and then seemed to think better of it.

“Yeah he did…” Kurt’s irritation must have shown because Chandler rushed to explain. “But not because he thinks you need to be cubied or anything. It just is what it is, Kurt. You’re new, I’m not, and he needs to know someone is looking out for you when he can’t.”

Kurt wanted to say something to Blaine but Ian’s accusations that he didn’t know how to think like a leader were still too fresh in his mind and he bit his tongue. It was out of his hands. Though it wasn’t in the least fair to Chandler Blaine had made his decision and Kurt supposed that it was just one of the many things he would have to accept until things changed. They would, because he knew how to persevere and because Blaine was a good person who wanted to be a good leader and a good mate as well.

He murmured a soft thank you and Chandler looked so taken aback that Kurt almost smiled.

“It might be necessary, it might not be, but I don’t think I’d ever have asked it of you… I know what it means.”

“You’re my friend Kurt.” Chandler gave an easy shrug and a smile but there was no mistaking the gravitas of the moment. “And he’s my Alpha. I know exactly what this means. Nobody joins the guard who doesn’t. Besides I got my man. I can die happy.” Kurt couldn’t help but flinch at those words and Chandler flushed. “Well obviously I don’t want to! I just meant I’m on cloud nine. If the earth crashed into the sun two seconds from now it wouldn’t be a bad feeling to end on you know what I mean?”

In Kurt’s arms Benito’s eyes went wide as saucers and he looked between Kurt and his mother with wonderment and whispered in amazement. “It can do that?”

“Not today” she answered biting back a smile. Benito only looked mildly relieved.

“How about tomorrow?” 

Kurt couldn’t help it. His grin broke loose and he chuckled as Lina leaned down to kiss her son’s brow and smooth away the worried wrinkles.

“Anything is possible tomorrow,” she told him in a quiet voice. “But we will worry about tomorrow when it comes.” Straightening she nodded towards the stairs. “Now, it’s time for the game to begin. Go on mi amato, show your friends your hiding place.”

~*~*~*~

On the north side of Shrock lake if one went north far enough to where the trees thinned there was a road. Past the road there was a sprawling hospital campus. Past that there was a thin stretch of trees that grew a thinner stretch of forest. This forest ran right up against a creek which bordered another smaller campus, this one belonging to a local college. 

Otterbien University was unusually full for an evening in midsummer but it was opening night of R.A. initiation, which meant a barbeque and campfire songs for the sixty or so young men and women who would serve as the mentors and guides for the returning undergraduates come fall.

Ryder Lynn wasn't the type of person who set out to become an R.A. He wasn't a natural leader, charismatic, or even all that enthusiastic about college life. He could use the discount on his room and board however and he supposed it would look good on his resume when he graduated next year.

His father never failed to remind Ryder how much it would take to overcome his limitations (and he did not mean the dyslexia that had plagued Ryder all of his life). He was talking about Ryder’s condition. He was a lycanthrope, which meant if the pills and shit he was forced to take every day weren’t working (or had stopped being strong enough) he would turn into a beast. It also meant that once a month if he didn’t knock himself clean out with a cocktail of drugs and lock himself up just in case, that he’d go savage and probably end up shot to death by some poor dude just trying to protect his wife and kids.

Despite his father’s research Ryder had all but given up on ever really having a normal life. As soon as people found out about his condition he was labeled a freak (and forget about finding a girl who wouldn't mind that their kids would all be freaks too). His own mother hadn’t revealed to his father that she had lycanthropy until well into their marriage and she’d gotten lucky that he loved her enough to stick around and devote his life trying to find a cure. If the college administration found out Ryder would probably be kicked out of school and worse still if word got back to the right people his dad would lose everything.

Everyone would assume that he had it to (his dad and the rest of his scientist friends agreed that the disease was passed down genetically) and then the neighbors would know and they'd probably run the Lynn's out of the neighborhood. Ryder's family had been forced to move once before on his account back when he was nine. This kid, Daniel Newman, used to like to torture him by sitting on his back and forcing him to eat dirt. One day he'd gotten creative in his torment and had tried to drag Ryder into the woods and leave him tied to a tree. 

The woods were the one place Ryder never went. There were wolves in the woods, not normal ones but lycanthropes like him who didn't take medication and became rabid animals… people who liked the taste of blood and bone in their mouths. Ryder had to remind himself every day that he didn’t. That he was a human male and not a beast and that any illness could be overcome. Ryder had bit Danny Newman so hard he'd broken the other boy’s wrist, so hard that blood had gushed into his mouth and bones had crunched beneath his teeth and Danny Newman had nearly lost his hand.

They'd moved to Lima in the dead of night the next week and Ryder had never forgotten the sound of angry voices surrounding their house, police barricades the only barrier between his family and a riled up mob, or his parent’s disappointment. 

R.A. training wasn't turning out all that bad. The others were pretty cool (most of them were just like him, needing the discount and something that screamed leadership potential to their future employers) and not at all the cyborgs he had been warned to expect. 

They were gathered around the make-shift camp fire swapping ghost stories and munching on burgers and dogs. One of the guys was entertaining the group with a gruesome story about a guy who had supposedly gotten murdered in the woods behind the school a few years back.

“Somebody dared him to follow Alum creek all the way to the lake on a night just like tonight. It was close to the full moon. Anybody with a brain in their heads knew it wasn't a night to be out wandering around by yourself. Especially not in the woods, especially not there. You know what they say is at Shrock lake?” Reese was really getting into his story, spurred on by the breathless attention of a couple of the girls and ignoring the eye roll a couple of the others were giving him.

“There's another school over there. A lycan school,” Marley Rose (a really nice girl who Ryder had shared a class with last year) answered and Reese gave her an annoyed look before turning back to the pair of wide eyed girls who were clutching onto each other as he continued in a low creepy voice, “Some say it's a school but has anyone ever seen it? Some say there isn't any school at all. Just a house. In that house lives Bloody Anderson and all those kids who go into the forest? Well they never come out do they? And neither did Gary Fletcher! He went in that night and just never came back. They sent a search party of course...” Reese paused for dramatic effect and Marley rolled her eyes.

“What did they find?” this other girl Sarah Jane asked, her mousey voice sounding even mousier with her fear.

“Pieces,” Reese answered in a dark tone and Ryder felt sick. He curled his legs up tighter to his chest and tried not to make himself look like too much of a basket case when he broke out into a sudden sweat and began to shiver. 

“The wolves got him and they left pieces of him leading all the way back to their den. The cops followed, hoping there might be something left of poor Gary to bring back to his parents. But do you know what happened to the cops when they went into the wolves den?”

The group seemed to draw a collective breath. Ryder squeezed his eyes shut and shrank inside his head trying to drown out all of their voices. He’d learned how to get lost that way when he was a kid. He was good at it so he never heard what the cops in the story found and that was A-Okay by him judging by the surprised shriek a couple of girls let out a moment later and the laughter that followed.

“Ryder?” He didn’t quite hear the speaker but he felt the gentle touch against his knee and he jerked, blinking his eyes open like a man surfacing from a dream.

Ryder looked up from his knees and found Todd, one of the senior RAs, standing nearly on top of him. None of his other senses, usually unusually keen, had warned him that Todd was getting so close; but then again he was never all that sharp this close to the full moon. Valproxin X was a doosy on the senses. 

“Yeah?” he grunted and Todd frowned at him briefly before nodding his head toward the steps of the men's dorms where they'd set up the grill. “Come help me with the dogs.”

Ryder nodded gratefully at him and had to force his sluggish muscles to unlock, stumbling to his feet to follow Todd over to the grill. The side effects of the meds always got so much worse when he was upset. He shouldn't have left his valium back in his dorm. 

“You alright man?” Todd asked when they were far enough away from the others not to be heard. “You looked like you were about to lose it back there.”

Ryder opened his mouth to reply but his throat was so dry that no sound escaped. He had to close his mouth and swallow a couple of times before he managed to growl out, “Yeah man, I'm good. I'm fine. Just... out of it.”

“You getting sick? You're seriously pale right now.”

_'I'm always sick,'_ Ryder thought, but for Todd he just grimaced and nodded. He'd need the excuse in two days when he locked himself in his room and saturated himself in drugs. 

“Yeah I'm—”

Suddenly a howl exploded into the night air and Todd jumped, cursing under his breath as he stumbled over a tree root. Back in the circle the girls all screamed, the sound quick and sharp and then cut off as they all waited, holding their breath.

Ryder's heart slammed in his chest and his vision swam as every nerve ending he had seemed to spark all at once.

“Hey guys knock that off, that isn't cool!” Todd called back to the group nervously glancing at Reese and the other guys and Ryder could hear the hope in his voice, smell the fear, but they both knew that sound hadn't come from anything human.

A howl came again, and this time it was joined by several more, a chorus of voices coming at them from all sides. 

~*~*~ 

_“Is it always like this?”_

In the minutes that Blaine and the inner guard had been watching the house there had been little to no activity either on the street or within the house. Kurt was there, as he was always _there_ in Blaine's mind but now it was different. His aura was cool, his thoughts distant and quiet. 

This time Blaine knew the reserve had less to do with the discord between them and more to do with the fine winding tendrils of anxiousness creeping through them both. Kurt held himself apart because he was uncertain and when Kurt was uncertain in himself or the outcome of the next moment he needed the solidarity of standing on his own. Blaine had seen it enough to be used to it but he still welcomed the interruption from endless waiting.

He'd been counting every breath Kurt took because that tidal movement of in and out, the pushing and pulling of air, because that's what gave _him_ solidarity.

_“My brother Christian used to say that the waiting before a battle was worse than the battle itself._ Blaine saw himself at sixteen standing in the middle of a foreign wood, waiting to see who of the others who had escaped Westerville would come back to fight with him, give their lives for him. Wes and the others had followed when so many others stayed behind waiting to see the outcome, but sure that a sixteen year old protégé could not defeat the Alpha. They had been with him every battle since then and those of them who could be were with him now. 

David and Flint's faces flashed in his mind and he felt the hollow ache of their absence. Beside him in the grass Noelle lifted her dark head, her long snout nuzzling at his side as she soothed him with comforting licks. Blaine knew he wasn't alone in his grief, that the rest of the guard was feeling the loss of their comrades as well. Some practical portion of his brain whispered that it would affect their rhythm and communication on the battlefield, especially with Wes gone, but Blaine was confident Adam could step in and pick up the slack.

_“It's been so long._ Kurt's thoughts came again. _Maybe they aren't coming?”_

_“Something is.”_ Blaine knew it in every bone. 

And it was. It did. 

A moment later Blaine felt something burn against the bottom of his paws as if the earth itself had heated up to scald him. His connection to the land was more than just the pride of having been born there. This was the Merlin's magic, connecting the Alpha to the land and there was not an inch of Westerville that wasn't Blaine's domain and the earth cried to him the moment it tasted blood. 

On the back of the earth’s warning Ian's voice filled his head, heavy with power that never failed to leave a dull throbbing ache between his eyes.

_“The MacTere have brought their fight to the common people. Go. They are at the college. They will move toward city center.”_

It took little more than the twitching of Blaine’s ears for the others to fall into line beside him, each of them alert, their bodies taught with tension as they waited for his instruction. Blaine was instantly torn. Sebastian was attacking the townspeople which meant police intervention and a bloodbath. It meant fighting two enemies at once because human police weren't fond of asking which wolf to shoot. 

Sebastian had a much smaller force. He had to know there wasn't any way back from this. It could only mean that he knew Blaine would be forced to leave Lina and see to the disaster in town and that was exactly what he must want. Blaine didn't kid himself that Sebastian wouldn't use the opportunity to make good on his intention to kill the Lina and Kurt was with her which would only sweeten the pie.

He kept Lina and Kurt party to his thoughts as he opened the channel in his mind to address the entire guard. In an instant he held over a hundred minds inside his own. He was party to their thoughts, their wants, and every last crack in their design within the blink of an eye. It should have been excruciating, enough to drive a person quickly mad, but he was well experienced in holding himself a part from it, protected by mental barriers he'd spent his adolescence practicing how to erect.

He felt the energy that was Kurt flicker and shudder beneath the weight of those minds and without thought he brought the essence that was Kurt into himself, shielded as well as if he'd pulled the other man into his arms and turned his back on a spray of bullets. Kurt would learn in time how to shield himself as Blaine did but for now he was both their shields.

_“Those of you charged to protect pack land maintain your positions. Adam, Harmony, Randal and John you're with me. Luke, Noelle you're to stay here with your parties. The majority of their force will be in town but they're coming for Lina. You can be sure of that.”_ Noelle's brown ears twitched, her nervousness reflected in the uneasy shifting of her body.

_“Alpha, is it wise to leave your mate here... considering?”_ It was as forward as any of them dared to be with the question, feeling the need to remind Blaine of the danger to Kurt and none of them wanting to challenge his ability to care for his mate. Blaine licked over her muzzle in assurance. He could hardly be angry with her for voicing his own fears.

_“I'm not leaving her alone Blaine,”_ Kurt’s voice insisted. He at least had the good sense to keep his thoughts between the two of them and not challenge him openly.

_“I didn't ask you to”_ Blaine thought, and he could not help the thought that swiftly followed that he should. He could hear his father's voice and then Coopers the way it had always sounded in the training yard berating him that if he were any sort of Alpha he'd make Kurt go back to the house and stay there.

But he'd never been an Alpha like his father, and unlike Cooper he had never wanted to be. And yet somehow or another he found himself repeating the mistakes of his father, and the fathers who had come before him, and he wondered if that just wasn't how it was. History would simply repeat itself unless otherwise dissuaded. He would really be a fool to let it, he decided. He wanted so much better than his father’s legacy. He could feel Ian’s displeasure but Blaine knew it was the only choice he could make.

_“Kurt's staying. Lina will need all the help she can. The MacTere have come to our home and threatened those that we've sworn safety. This fight belongs to all of us.”_

There were surges of energy and gruff sounds of agreement as each of them stood, anxious to protect their home and drive away the threat to it. Blaine threw back his head and howled, the others following suit as they sprang into action.

As Blaine raced through the trees he was a dark shadow moving swiftly and silently with seemingly single minded purpose; but Blaine would never be single minded again. As his paws carried him further and further away from Kurt something of his consciousness remained behind. For a moment more Kurt hesitated and then Blaine could feel him opening to him so that they shared their eyes, and with every breath Blaine took he could hear the pull and push of air in Kurt's lungs just a second before as if Kurt breathed for him. He knew that for Kurt it was the same and the marvel of it chased away the darkness of fear inside him.

_“Don't be afraid. I'll be with you.”_ Neither one of them knew who had begun the thought. It was simply theirs.

~*~*~

The Café had been empty when Santana arrived except for a skeleton kitchen crew and a lone waitress who had been comfortably sat at the hostess station with a magazine, singing not that quietly to herself. She'd looked slightly annoyed at the interruption of the door chime but her eyes had widened in surprise for some reason when Santana strolled up, the woman's dark brows lifting as she took in Santana's attire. So skin tight mini dresses and constricting boots weren't exactly typical in the lycan wardrobe, sue her. 

Santana liked to think that she'd been born with a special gift. She could hide more weapons on her person than a ninja and could get undressed like it was nobody’s business, which of course it wasn't.

“Can I help you?” name tag Mercedes had asked and Santana had demanded to speak to the owners. “They're at the funeral...” the woman had paused and Santana had gotten the feeling that she was expected to do something with that piece of unwanted Intel but she'd just stared at the woman until she went on.   
“I hold down the fort when they're busy. Do you want to wait here?”

Santana really hadn't but the other alternative was going back to Penny and her snow pets with nothing but hours of waiting ahead of her and she just couldn't deal with that so she'd had Aretha Franklin's love child show her to a seat and had ordered the house steak. 

Santana took her last bite of the succulent meat, humming quietly to herself as the rich tangy flavors of the juices exploded over her tongue and washed out the underlining tastes of grease and charcoal. Still not as good as raw but at least when the waitress had asked her how she'd like it she hadn't given her the crazy eyes for ordering it extra extra rare. One of the perks of this being a lycan joint she supposed. 

There were of course places in the city run by lycans for lycans, but they came with stigma (and not all of it undeserved). People didn't go to the clubs for community (at least not if they were smart) they went because they were tired of being alone, tired of being cooped up or just plain bored with their lives and searching for a spark of danger. And sure, they went to be next to another warm body, to feel the spark of connection with another of their kind, but there was no replacing the feeling of true bonds. If there was anything not built for temporary connections it was a lycan and yet Santana had far too many behind her and now it was all she had ahead of her.

Santana was just wallowing in the sheer morbidity of that when a steaming cup of coffee was set on the table in front of her with a light thunk. She glared at the cup, and then up at the woman who had placed it there because she hadn't _asked_ for anyone's pity, and she knew pity coffee when she saw it. She could practically smell this woman’s need to play Mother Teresa oozing out her pores.

“I just thought you could use it,” the woman seemed to answer her thoughts. “Things have been rough around here lately.”

“They're about to get rougher.” Santana shrugged. She wanted to tell Mercedes Jones to take her coffee and leave her alone but Britt's face kept flashing in her mind, that disappointed pout she always sported when Santana used a certain tone. It was rarely that Brittany looked disappointed in her. She didn't think she'd have been able to take that. It was always as if Brittany were disappointed in any world that would require Santana to be harsh and was harsh to her in return. 

“Consider me your black cat,” she whispered.

No sooner had the words escaped then outside the eerie wailing of a siren began causing both women to go still, holding their collective breath. 

“A tornado siren?” Mercedes questioned. “But it's a clear night...”

“It's an alert to get inside, doesn't have to be a tornado.” Santana snapped, rising to her feet. She stared out the blackened windows and watched the passerby on the street stop and stare at the sky in confusion, some of them whispering in groups, others scurrying towards their cars. “A siren is a siren, I doubt they have different one for every state of emergency.” 

As if to illustrate her point two police cars and an ambulance raced by, their sirens on top of the other filling the night air with jarring beeps and wails. The symphony might as well have been titled panic because Santana could hear other police racing through down town, all of them headed in the same direction and her ears might have been far keener than any humans but it didn't take wolf ears to know something was going down and it wasn't anything good. People on the street were running now.

Santana was already moving for the door when she shouted instructions for Mercedes and the kitchen workers to stay inside and lock the door behind her.

When she got back to Penny's block she found Brittany, Penny, and half the neighborhood gathered near the street staring at the starry night sky and listening to the siren wail with bemused looks on their faces and not enough fear in their eyes. Every dog on the street s was barking. One man was saying to another guy in a Buckeyes cap that it might be an air raid as she ran up. A woman appeared in a doorway across the street in a fluffy night gown, a wireless phone in one hand. 

“The county just issued a code silver,” she shouted to her neighbors. “I've just seen it on the television.”

“That means a kid has gone missing right?” The guy in the Buckeyes cap asked and Penny shook her head.

“That's code Adam, silver means there's a violent threat. Probably subhuman.”

“It's wolves,” Brittany offered to the crowd and as if to highlight her point the sound of dogs barking up and down the street seemed to intensify. Brittany looked pointedly at Santana as she added, “I heard them howl.”

“The werewolves?” the woman in the bathrobe gasped and sputtered. “B-but why?”

“What do you mean why?” the guy who'd thought they were being air raided demanded. “They're _werewolves_.They never need a reason.”

“That's not fair,” Penny instantly leaped to defend all of lycan kind and Santana rolled her eyes. “Lycans don't attack unless provoked. More people are killed by—”

“More people are killed by acting stupid than people who don’t,” Santana butted in, repressing the urge to growl at the collection of idiots standing around her who all presumably had death wishes. “Get inside all of you and stay there!”

She wasn't in the mood to be nice about it and she was gratified to watch Penny's neighbors scramble for their houses at the push of dominance in her command. Sometimes alpha dominance came in handy. Penny herself seemed to realize halfway to the door that she was leaving Santana and Brittany behind and her step faltered. 

“Aren't you two coming?” She asked.

“I'm not. If there's some rogue causing trouble Anderson might need help putting him down.” Santana didn't need to say that it would also provide an in for her to talk to Blaine and get him to meet with Britt before her coven arrived. “Make sure Britt—”

“I want to come with you.” The blond vampiress didn’t even let her finish. “It's not a rogue, it's a pack. I heard them howling” she reminded them both.

Santana grit her teeth. If Anderson was in the middle of a damn territory feud it was all the more reason to keep Brittany out of the fighting in her opinion. Santana took the vampire woman's hand trying to ignore Penny watching them and murmured under her breath, “Exactly why you need to stay here. You can't even kill remember? Hummel practically made mincemeat out of you and he's just a convert.”

With a huff Brittany jerked her hand away, her blue eyes bright with challenge and her lip stuck out in a childlike pout.

“Why do you and Mikey both think the only thing that matters is being able to kill people?” She demanded to know. “You both think like killers and I don't like it at all. I won't stand for it. You can go away and I'll take care of myself.”

“Excuse me?” Santana blinked at the other woman in shock, not knowing how to deal with the pain suddenly splintering through her chest. “What the hell are you talking about? I just don't want to see you get hurt!”

“So you’ll just force me to watch you get hurt? I'm not a child. I don't need a mother. I need a friend. I thought we were friends but I guess we're not.”

“How can you say that after everything?!” Santana demanded and good god were those tears stinging her eyes? No way in hell was she going to shed a tear for some ungrateful fang girl who didn’t have the good sense not flip out on the only thing that stood between her and a politically advantageous death.

“All I know is you really need me and if you cared about me at all you'd let me help you the way you're helping me,” Brittany returned before turning on her heels and striding towards the door where Penny waited with her long legs. When she reached Penny she turned back just long enough to pin Santana with such a look of disappointment that Santana had never felt more let down in her life... let down in herself.

“You think I'm broken just like everybody else.”

Santana watched her disappear inside with Penny and blinked away the stinging in her eyes.

She didn't do this. _Any_ of this! She didn't let people get close to her and she certainly couldn't afford to let a _vampire_ close enough to matter so much that... Santana shook her head, as if it would shake the awful thought that sprang up away, the thought that she could love this woman enough that she would be _everything_ because she was lycan and she only got one shot at it and there was just no way with Brittany. No way forward at all.

~*~*~

Jeff heard someone approaching the door almost from the moment they came running down the hall. Calvin wasn’t trying to be quiet and Jeff knew it was Calvin because he could smell him outside the door sweating profusely.

The sandy coated wolf sprang to his feet, exhaustion forgotten as the boy pulled the heavy wood door open with a grunt and fumbled with the keys to find the right one for the padlock on the bars. Jeff didn’t bother to ask how he’d gotten them, or what the boy thought he was doing. None of it mattered. He had to get into town, to Nick, before it was too late.

_“Hurry, Calvin hurry!”_ Someone had to be on guard. Someone would hear. Someone would notice.

“No one’s here. They’re gone. There’s a fire at the house,” Calvin rushed to explain as he finally thrust open the iron gate and even Jeff had to pause at that.

_“You set the Alpha’s house on fire?!”_

“I put it out!” The boy immediately replied, sounding defensive. “Nobody got hurt.”

_“oh my god… Look thanks for springing me Calvin but stay here.”_

“No! You’re going to Lina’s and I want to go too. Blaine might kill Sebastian and—” Calvin shrieked when the big tan wolf lunged for him, snapping its powerful jaws as he scrambled backwards trying to avoid its teeth, a hair raising growl rumbling from its throat.

_I said stay!”_ The command pushed against Calvin and made him stumble backward a few more steps but Jeff didn’t stay to make sure his order was obeyed. He had no more time to spare Calvin as he raced out the door and left the boy behind, shivering and shaking where he stood. 

He’d received a direct order from an alpha, so when Calvin ordered his legs to move at first they didn’t. But the boy did not give up, could not give up, and eventually they did.

~*~*~

It happened so fast none of the students had time to run. The howls came and a hot sensation rushed down his spine. The next second a dozen blurred shapes rushed from the trees and some tiny voice inside told him to duck. Ryder hit hard stone and began to roll down the hard steps with jarring thuds as something large flew over his head. He heard Todd scream and the sound was cut short by an animal snarl and an ugly gurgling sound.

His body was on fire with tingles, a thousand and one fire ants crawling over and biting at his skin. His bruised limbs burned with an undo amount of ache as he scrambled to his hands and feet. Panic was a living thing inside beating inside his skull in a frantic repetition of _not safe not safe not safe_. His vision swam. Everything was doubled and for a moment he thought there were four of them only a few feet away and his heart lurched right into his throat.

But there were only two. A pair of giant grey wolves, the biggest animals Ryder had ever seen, had both ends of Sarah, each powerful jerk of their heads rending the air with the grotesque sounds of ripping flesh and cracking bone. Ryder only knew it was her because of the bright patches of baby blue quickly disappearing on what was left of her t-shirt.

His stomach lurched and his legs gave out, overcome by nausea, and he crashed to the pavement. He scraped his hands as he latently tried to catch himself. His fall drew the attention of one of the wolves and an instant later it was leaping on him. Ryder cringed, curling into a ball but the expected impact never came. He heard a female voice scream something and the wolf let out a sharp squeal and then Ryder heard something fall to the ground with a heavy thud.

He opened his eyes only to be confused by a bright blue wall of shimmering light in front of his face. It was surrounding him on all sides and when two of the wolves tried to charge through it they were repelled back and sent sprawling on the ground with pain filled whines. 

For a moment Ryder thought wildly that the strange light was coming from him but when he heard a gasp of pain and saw the light waver he turned to look behind him and gaped.

Marley was standing just a few feet behind him, her pale face beaded with sweat and spattered with droplets of blood. There was a large glistening blood stain on her side and more of it was running in thin rivulets down her left leg but she was standing with her arms stretched out on both sides, palms pushed against invisible walls and the light was streaming from them.

It was also waning and Ryder wasn’t the only one who noticed. One of the wolves beyond the wall of light crouched as if to leap again and a larger darker one snarled at it and then thoughts that came in a strange male voice filled Ryder’s head.

_“Wait till the witch tires.”_

_“She killed Jessica!”_ a second voice thundered and Ryder realized it was the two wolves snarling and snapping at each other who were speaking. They really were people! This was really what he would become if the disease took control! His frantic thoughts were broken up as behind him Marley let out another gasp, louder this time and the wall of blue flickered, dimmed, and all but disappeared.

_“And her magic will kill you! Don’t be a fool. It won’t be long now, she’s young and untrained.”_

Desperately Ryder looked to Marley, begging her to hold on with his gaze because every muscle in his body had tightened and locked including his jaw. He would have cried out at the pain, but only a garbled moan made it past his lips as pain screamed through his limbs. He had only a moment to wonder what was happening to him when his eyes caught the sight of movement on his arms. His horrified gaze stuck to the sight of hair, thick and ashy, growing out of his skin.

_‘You’re turning’_ he realized. He was turning into one of them. Then his body seized, his mind went up in sparks and he thought nothing more as his bones began to shake and twist. The pain was so terrible all he could do was scream and lose himself to the misery of it. 

The wolf woke to muffled voices and the sound of something wailing in the distance. There was a woman slumped next to him, unconscious, and bloodied.

_“…one of Anderson’s?”_ the first voice said, getting clearer in his mind as he came back to consciousness.

_“He doesn’t smell like them…”_ Something sniffed loudly close to his head. _“Ugh, smell that, he’s definitely tame. It’s the worst case I’ve ever seen. He must never let it out at all. Can’t he smell the way the wolf withers inside him?”_

_“I don’t know Cameron and I don’t care. We’ve got our orders, kill him and the girl.”_

_“But he’s wolf Hunter.”_

_“It doesn’t matter! You said it yourself, he’s all but smothered it to death. He won’t survive a minute on his own anyway. Kill him now! The police are on their way.”_

The wolf jumped up, taking the two who had stood over him by surprise, snapping his teeth at them in a desperate attempt to bite. His movements were too slow, too tired, to be little more than a nuisance to the other two. Over the initial surprise of his movement they growled and their muscles tensed to spring. They were distracted by the appearance of another. 

She, somehow he knew it was a she, was a streak of brown and black as she tackled the smaller of the grey wolves. She grabbed the unsuspecting wolf by the neck and twisted viciously. The two went rolling, writhing and slashing against each other but the outcome had already been decided when the female had taken ahold of his neck.

The male’s whine was shrill and short lived as his throat tore. The other male probably would have pounced and probably would have killed the female, if it weren’t for the explosive sound of gunfire that rent the night around them and the bullet that crashed through his right flank. The male grey howled in pain and turned toward the source of the gunfire, a wall of uniformed men, and charged.

On the ground the wolf whined at the putrid smell of gunpowder and smoke filling his nostrils and backed away nearly stumbling over the fallen form of the human woman he’d woken up next to.

_“Get out of here city boy. Unless you want to die?”_ A strange woman’s voice filled his head. The she-wolf pinned him with a golden glare before she snapped at his ankles, sending him running for the trees. The wolf did not know where it would go, only that there was safety in the woods.

~*~*~

Lina sat watching the door, toying with a small metal box in her hands. When the MacTere came they would not attempt subterfuge. They would break their way inside with the strength of their bodies, ten times that of a normal wolf, and they would find enjoyment in the fact that she would hear them and be forced to watch as the door splintered and shook.

She heard them when they came into the yard and she heard the battle begin when the guard wolves who were assigned to her protection intercepted them. It was vicious, it was brutal… it was lasting entirely too long. 

There had been an afternoon long ago, before she had discovered he was something other than lycan, when James had let her see his scars. She had cried and asked him for the story behind them but he had refused, only confirming that he had been tortured as a boy. She had asked why anyone would have wanted to kill a child. 

_“You think their goal was to kill me? Lina a man whose only got killing you on his mind doesn’t waste his time.”_

The wolves outside were a distraction for her protectors just like the ones in town were. The real threat would come for her and it would not waste a second. She couldn’t say whether or not she heard a noise at the back door but she began to walk toward it just the same, pausing only to type in the code to turn on the sprinklers. 

She was the only person on the block who had them. The McGregor’s had laughed the day she had them installed finding them like many other human conventions to be an oddity. She’d taken the teasing and claimed she liked her lawn green and didn’t want to have to rely on Mother Nature to keep it that way.

Looking at his scars had led James to give her an important lesson on survival. He’d warned her that one day she might need it because he had many enemies and they could come for him any day. She would be a target if it was discovered that they loved each other. She remembered naively thinking that dating a man who could turn into a wolf would mean no harm would ever come to her. 

_“You’ll protect me, won’t you James?”_

_“With my life, but that’s just the thing. I’ve died before. But you’re not going to. I’ll teach you how to survive.”_

_“How can I battle with wolves? Have you seen me mi amato? I’m not that big.”_

_“You’re bigger than you think. Hunters kill us every day and you… well you’re their daughter aren’t you? Think big darlin.”_

James was right. Though she didn’t like to think on it, she hadn’t been that naive girl in years and she had learned more than her fair share about how to hunt a wolf.

Lina reached the back door and she heard the sound of a soft laugh. She knew the men on the other side could hear her just as she heard them. The door was cool against her naked flesh but it was sturdy and she needed it for the moment it took to gather her courage. She looked towards the ceiling and reached for Kurt’s mind.

_“They’re here.”_

_“We can see them out the window. Don’t worry they can’t see us. Why’d you turn the sprinklers on? They just started laughing about it.”_

A body slammed against the door, right against where her head lay and she jumped with a cry, her heart racing as the laughter on the other side of the door continued.

The slamming continued for a moment more before there was a pause. Lina curled the small metal box in her fists, shaking as she waited.

_“Lina?”_ A cruel voice filled her head. _“We know you’re in there. I can smell how afraid you are. You should be, because we’re going to kill you. But you know what I’m going to do first? I’m going to hold you down and fuck you.”_ Lina shuddered but she grit her teeth, refusing to give the monster on the other side of the door anything more than her fear. She would not make a sound that Benito might hear and remember later. Just a moment more, a few seconds more. She could do this.

_“Why don’t you open up for me?”_ The voice crooned and this time Lina felt the pull of dominance. Her submissive nature responded to the pull, her hand slowly reaching for the handle on the door despite every effort she made to stop it. _“That’s right Honey. Open up for me. You know girls aren’t usually my thing but I’ll make an acceptation for you.”_ More laughter followed that little quip. Lina tried to count how many voices she heard. Two? Three? She’d only really have a shot at one.

_“How many Kurt?”_ She asked, hoping he was still able to see them out the attic window.

_“Three. The bastard doing the talking is Sebastian, their leader. We’ve met. Don’t open the door, Lina, I don’t think he’s all talk.”_

The problem was Sebastian’s talk was heavy with dominance. He was an alpha, a pack Alpha at that, and she was an omega. She wasn’t designed to be a match for him and she wasn’t going to waste her energy trying to be.

_“Probably not, nevertheless this begins now. Keep Benito quiet.”_

_“Lina!”_ Kurt’s voice boomed through her mind but Lina’s hand was already on the door and twisting. The other hand clutched the small metal box behind her back.

~*~*~ 

Kurt and Chandler watched the confrontation happening down below. His vision was blurred just the slightest around the edges as Blaine stayed within his mind, watching alongside him as Lina opened the back door where Sebastian and two men with dark hair stood. Their names were Nicolas Duval and Thaddeus Harwood. The knowledge was his because it was Blaine’s. In turn his mate knew how close he was to rushing down to aide his friend and Blaine kept begging him to stay put, assuring him that Noelle and the others would be along to help her. 

But Kurt could hear them fighting in the front of the house and he knew none of her neighbors would offer assistance either. Not until their Alpha ordered it. They were on strict command to stay inside away from the fighting. It was a smart command. The average pack member wasn’t trained for this, they had mates and small cubs to worry about, and if police showed up things would only get more dangerous.

So it seemed they could only watch helplessly as the one called Thaddeus grabbed Lina by the wrist and yanked her outside, crushing her tiny frame against his. But Lina was not so helpless as she appeared. One moment the alpha was jeering at her, making to push her towards Sebastian and the next there was a brilliant flare of light and Thaddeus went up in flames like a candle.

“Christ!” Chandler’s mouth fell open beside him. Kurt found the answer to the question he never had to ask in Blaine’s mind, coming to him as if he’d called for it.

Hunter’s fire: colorless odorless flammable liquid commissioned by wizards for Benito Medici the fourth. They called it the ‘flesh eating flame’ because it only devoured flesh and it did not stop burning until there was nothing left but bone. Only magic could put it out and Lina had doused the whole yard in the stuff. 

Thaddeus immediately dropped Lina and started screaming, flailing like a wind tossed sail as the fire consumed him. Nick and Sebastian jumped back, desperate to avoid contact with their comrade since they too had been soaked by the sprinklers. The smaller one Nick seemed to be the brighter of the two because his gaze immediately honed on the tiny silver lighter Lina had dropped when Thad pushed her on the ground and he dove for it at the same instant that she did.

Nick and Lina grappled for the lighter, their bodies twisting in the grass, Lina's pale flesh streaking with mud and dirt as spray from the sprinklers covered them both. It made Kurt's heart pound dangerously hard in his chest, thinking about how one slip with that lighter could send them both up into flames. He gripped the window sill in a white knuckled grip when Nick pried the tiny metal object from his friend’s hands, heart in his throat as he waited for the worst, but miraculously Duval didn't take the opportunity to end it. He hurled the object across the lawn in a high arch. It disappeared somewhere in the neighbors bushes and Kurt stared at the man perplexed. 

Why had he done that? He could understand maybe wanting to draw out her death, he wouldn't have been surprised at all if Sebastian had stopped him from delivering the same fate to her that Lina had given their comrade but Duval hadn't even attempted it. He hadn't even saved it to taunt her with!

Jeff’s face floated into his mind and he understood that this was the man who had warned Jeff about the attack in the first place (the man Jeff had betrayed his oaths for) and hope sprang up inside him.

_“Don't relax just yet.”_ Blaine warned. _“He may have genuine feelings for Jeff but he is still MacTere and she is a Medici. There isn't a lycan alive who hasn't dreamed at a chance to hurt that family.”_

Even as he said it Sebastian grabbed Lina by her dark hair, yanking her onto her back and climbing on top of her. Beneath them, hidden in a built in compartment in the back of an old cupboard, Benito began to scratch and yip, thumping and thrashing and whining loud enough to wake the dead, or more importantly loud enough to draw the attention of the men below.

Kurt knew what he'd promised but the fact remained that the others weren't coming fast enough and he Chandler and the boy were cornered up here.

_“Kurt.”_ Blaine knew what he was thinking almost before he thought it. Blaine was so entrenched in his mind that it was impossible for him not to. He discovered that it went both ways when phantom pain splintered through his side and he gasped, his vision suddenly tunneling and taking him out of the attic. His sight was still blurred but he was no longer in the attic. He was outside on his back with the ground below and the night sky above. The maw of a savage looking grey wolf was lunging towards him and Kurt flinched, closing his eyes as vertigo overwhelmed him.

Kurt was screaming his name when he felt teeth and claws rake over Blaine's skin. 

~*~*~*~

The MacTere were picking off the first responders on the scene when Blaine arrived. His eyes had quickly assessed the position of the enemy, the position of each of the officers still able bodied enough to aim a gun and shoot, the position of any civilian who might need immediate assistance and those who might be close enough to a fallen or otherwise make shift weapon and decide to play hero. 

_“In the practice yard you can look your opponent in the eye, maybe get inside his head and figure out what he's going to do next. Out there you have to be one step ahead. You have to know where he'll be next before he does and if you hesitate Baby Brother, you and those who follow you will be dead.”_

Days of sparring with his brothers came back to him in an instant, Cooper crowing over an easy win and Conner soothing his bruised pride with advice that always came back to him in moments such as this.

_“You care too much Blaine. You let him get to you. If you allow something to distract you out there all it takes is a moment.”_

Words that came back to haunt him now as he was yanked onto his back by the grip of hard teeth and sharp claws tried to dig into his vulnerable underbelly. Blaine twisted so that they split gashes down his side instead and heard a scream. Till the day he died Blaine would remember the sound of Kurt's scream. It tore through him sharper than any claws and it left behind a numbing frantic need to be near him and silence the pain reverberating through their bodies. 

He twisted beneath his enemy, slashing with claws and snapping with teeth to wound his assailant. He was larger than the grey wolf which made it easier to flip their positions when he bit into his side, gripping tight with his jaws and pulling with all his might. The battle might have gone on longer if Santana hadn't been there ready to pounce on the rear legs of Blaine's unlucky enemy. Despite being unfamiliar with his fighting style or his signals she read Blaine easy enough. She pulled as Blaine attacked at the neck, cracking the bones in the grey wolf's legs and stretching him out, making it impossible for him to twist away from the crushing pressure in his throat. 

Even the sound of the tearing of the ligament Santana had firmly clasped in her mouth and the wolf’s esophagus crumbling beneath his own jaws could not drown out the sound of the harsh (and underlining desperate) rebuke Kurt served him with when the danger to him was gone.

_“Are you trying to get killed?!_

Blaine was dizzy with the intensity of their combined emotions and on top of that Santana was angry with him. She got in his face with a snarl and a snap and her voice joined Kurt's in shouting at him.

_“Are you planning on fucking joining us Anderson or are you waiting for your stand in?! Hummel's a big boy! Cut the damn strings loverboy or you are going to come up missing some vital organs if you don't start watching your own ass because that flea bitten stray was all over it!”_

_“She's right”_ Kurt added almost before she'd finished. Another one of the MacTere came charging at them with a venomous snarl and Blaine turned to meet his attack, signaling John and Santana to attack from side and rear. Santana was just a second on the slow side, unused to Blaine’s particular signals but making up for it with speed and ferocity as she took her cue from John’s movements. 

_“Everything is going to fall apart if we don't work together. You need to protect those people. I need to stop Sebastian. You've got to trust me or I **will** be a liability. We'll both die and everyone that's important to us will most likely die too.”_

Blaine drove his attacker backward and Santana tore open his side with her teeth. John crippled his hind legs and when the wolf fell with a whine and a squeal they tore into his belly, yanking out ropes of muscle and innards. There was a crack of gunfire and then John stumbled as if pushed and Blaine felt phantom pain explode in his side. More police had arrived on the scene and now that the wolves were preoccupied with fighting each other they were shooting in earnest.

_“Watch their guns! Disarm them if you can but do **not** kill.”_ He commanded the others, racing toward the uniformed man now taking aim at Santana. The man managed to take a couple panicked shots at him but they went wide and when Blaine’s mouth clamped around his arm his shooting days were pretty much over. He tried to gentle his bite and not take the man’s arm off. He was only doing his job after all, but in the heat of battle the wolf was harder to rein in. This man had injured John and would not hesitate before killing any of them, despite that without them the MacTere would surely have seen them all dead. 

Kurt was right. He and Santana were _both_ right. He couldn’t split his mind between Kurt and the battle but that was worlds easier said than done. Before Kurt he'd been alone. He'd been waiting his whole life to find him and sometimes it had felt like more waiting than could be stuffed into a single lifetime. To lose him again, to lose him at all, _that_ was Blaine’s greatest fear and it was enough to make a coward of him.

_“You're not going to lose me.”_ Kurt’s soul whispered to his. _I will never say goodbye to you. Not this lifetime or the next. But you've got to let me go now or we'll lose this one.”_

This one was important. He didn't know how he knew. Ian went on about the alignment of stars and prophecies and of course Blaine listened, he had to, but he was no wizard. He was more concerned with the here and now, protecting his land and his people and assuring their future. And yet he felt it even as Kurt said it that the life he was living now whatever had come before it meant more than he fully understood.

_“Give him hell, from both of us,”_ Blaine thought, and then he closed the door between them. His eyes immediately sharpened. Gone was the blur that had been crowding the edges of his gaze. Gone was the attic; gone was the taxing but intimate duality of being partly in himself and partly in Kurt. It was up to Kurt now to save himself and the others and Blaine had to believe that he could because Kurt would draw his strength from him. He was determined that when he did there would be nothing of doubt there for him to find.

~*~*~*~

Kurt fell down a long black tunnel. The courtyard of the college got more and more blurred the longer he fell and he jerked when he felt himself come to a sudden stop, like slamming into the pavement. His head was throbbing when he opened his eyes again and found himself back in the attic. Chandler was holding him up, his eyes wild with concern and something that looked suspiciously like tears as he watched Kurt come back to himself.

“Christ are you okay? You just spazzed… you were in Blaine right? You’re not having a seizure?”

“I’m okay,” Kurt assured him, pushing him away to look out the window and nearly falling over. His limbs felt sluggish as if he didn’t quite remember how to control them. He caught himself on the window sill and Chandler was there a second later helping him to right himself. 

A quick glance below confirmed that little time had passed. Sebastian was straddling Lina, wrestling her arms above her head and in his hiding place Benito was going crazy, his cries for his mother and the waves of distress he was emoting making enough racket there was no doubt once Sebastian killed Lina he’d know exactly where to find them.

Kurt had to act now but the immensity of the task ahead was like nothing he’d ever faced before. He wasn’t a soldier. He didn’t know how to stop a man like Sebastian and too much was at stake to just rush in there and get himself killed. For a second despair nearly overwhelmed him. If only he _had_ been born here like Blaine. If only he had his experience or his power then maybe he’d stand half a chance.

Then it clicked.

Kurt grabbed Chandler’s arm, squeezing tightly as he demanded… “Before, when you said I was _in_ Blaine. I was wasn’t I? It was different this time. I wasn’t just in his head I was looking through his eyes! It was like I was looking out through him.”

“Yeah?” Chandler had no idea what he was getting at. Kurt barely knew. 

“And he was in me earlier. I was still me but he was there too… I knew everything he knew, the Hunter’s fire, the names of the strays. I knew that stuff because he knew it. I can stop Sebastian. Blaine and I can do that. He doesn’t have to be here so long as I’m here.”

Realizing that he wouldn’t be going into the fight alone gave Kurt courage. He was already kneeling to open the cupboard and the hidden latch to Benito’s hiding pace as Chandler responded. 

“Of course you can. You’re Blaine’s mate. You two share everything now including your strengths. I never doubted for a second that together you’d be the most powerful thing out here, but Kurt having weapons and knowing how to use them are different things!” Chandler warned. On some level Kurt knew he had a point but could it matter? No not now. 

“When he got hurt I went to him, I didn’t even think about it I just did it. And now I have to do this.”

As soon as the door was open Benito came tumbling out into his arms. He’d shifted and the tiny cubs body was wracked with shivers as he wriggled, clawed, and bit, all the while his cries for his mother filled their heads.

_“Mama! Mama!”_ the cub howled. He attacked Kurt’s arms with small but nonetheless sharp teeth and the older man hissed in pain as blood began to run from the wound. He struggled for a firm grip on the frantic cub and held him at arm’s length until they were eye to eye.

“Benito Medici!” he snapped, reaching for the confident man Lina always told him was a good dominant, the man who had once commanded an entire room full of alphas and stood up to Headmaster Strand. “Go to sleep.”

The cub immediately slumped, heavy as a sack of flour and Kurt nearly dropped him in the shock of actually having done it. He’d put Benito to sleep with a command, just like Blaine had done to him on the full moon. 

“I did it!” He couldn’t help but grin wildly. He was totally using this on his kids one day. If he survived long enough to have them that was.

“You did it!” Chandler agreed, nearly vibrating with excitement. “Next time you can take it easy though because cubs don’t need much and you like slapped him in the face with that command. I mean even _I_ felt sleepy so he’s probably going to sleep for a month.”

Kurt cringed, gently laying the sleeping cub back in the hidden compartment whispering an apology. He figured he’d have made it up to him if he could get them all through this alive.

~*~*~*~

Sebastian had the woman on the ground and she was struggling. He was cursing and striking at her, the fact that he didn’t immobilize her with a command testament to how intent he was to punish her before he took her life. Nick knew Sebastian wanted her to suffer. He knew about the knife he had hidden in his pocket ready to cut her open and peel away her skin. Sebastian had wanted to attack her as a man, in the shape the men of her family wore when they killed… when they skinned their kills.

He could smell her terror, feel the press of it grating on his senses but she made no sound. She bit her tongue until it bled but she refused to make a sound louder than a grunt even as Sebastian struck her again and again.

Nick had killed a lot of people in his life, alpha and omega alike, but everyone knew omegas made for the best kills. Not because they were particularly challenging but because they were the most submissive and even in the throes of bloodlust there was something invigorating about making one of them scream for you, something down right beautiful even… Nature was a savage thing after all and Nick had never apologized for accepting that side of himself. Jeff had changed that. He didn’t want this. Not anymore.

It wasn’t that he wanted to be better. He was proud of his heritage and prouder still of his family name. He had no desire to become a pack dog but he’d call himself anything, be anything he needed to be, if it meant he could keep Jeffrey Sterling by his side. 

But he couldn’t have both.

Now that he wasn’t in danger of being roasted alive and now that Sebastian had the woman there was no more time to deliberate. A choice had to be made but to say giving up on his family and betraying everything he’d ever stood for was easy would have been a lie, and for a moment his heart reached for Sebastian, his brother, his leader, his friend, and he could not choose.

Sebastian struck the woman hard across the jaw with a shout of rage and then he paused. He went completely still, ignoring the woman moaning beneath him and looked back at Nick.

“Nick?”

It was funny that just then, in that tiny space of a moment, Sebastian, whose fists were covered in blood and his eyes violent gold, could sound like a lost boy. They both did.

“I’m sorry.” 

Nick reached for the wolf not a second later and Sebastian was only a moment behind. 

~*~*~

_This is what is said of the last days of Arthur: The King had gone to France to wage war with the house of Dulac for the treachery of Sir Lancelot with Queen Guinevere. The traitors had been sentenced to death but upon the announcement of the King’s justice Lancelot had broken free of his holders and taken up a sword to save himself and his lady. He could not make it to the queen and fearing that he would be cut down she urged him to go, hoping that he might yet live even if she was to be burned for a traitor. Lancelot made good his escape and of all the knights who took up arms against him that day there were many more who refused. Among them were his son Sir Galahad and Sir Tristan who owed him his life._

_The Lady Isolde came to Camelot for the burning of Guinevere. On that day many of Arthur’s vassals, her husband Marke among them, screamed for the queen’s death and still there were many more who wept with Isolde._

_Sir Galahad would not attend the burning, instead he rode to the Abbey of his birth and it is said that he prayed, ‘If there be a God in heaven, show the righteous mercy and punish the wicked. Let not darkness devour us’. It is known that when Arthur called for council from his circle regarding the fates of the accused he tried to excuse Galahad from the proceedings for no son should have to speak against his father; but Galahad believing fully in each man’s responsibility to do right counseled the King that the only way they could call themselves righteous men was for them to see that the guilty paid for their crimes. By his own son’s word the King found his champion guilty._

_Sir Bedwyr, whom was called Bran on account that he was touched by the spirit of the Raven and blessed with magical gift, cursed Sir Galahad for a fool. Some swear to have seen the two men come to blows and so fierce was their battle that it only ended when Galahad had struck Sir Bedwyr’s hand clean from his wrist._

_Sir Bedwyr the Bran was heard by some saying to Galahad that even a god would forgive a son his love for his father, but no god’s forgiveness would save Galahad’s soul now for he would never forgive himself._

_It is known by only a few that Sir Bedwyr the Bran Mac Muchadha shared blood with Sir Galahad, not even by Sir Galahad himself, but there was much of the world and its secrets that Bedwyr saw with the Raven’s eye._

_The day the queen was set to burn Galahad vowed himself to God. He would know no sin and the touch of no lover. He would do whatever work God commanded of him if only he would grant him this one small mercy._

_“Spare them your wrath, for your servant is weak and cannot stand the weight of your justice. Spare them as I did not.”_

_Arthur ordered Sirs Gawain, Mordred, Gareth, and Gaheris, to guard the scene of the queens burning, knowing that Lancelot would attempt a rescue. Gawain refused to be a part of bringing shame to Guinevere but his younger brothers, Gaheris and Gareth, could not bring themselves to deny a command of the king's. To the horror of their elder brother they were slain by accident when during Lancelot’s rescue of the queen. It is said he screamed and cried for a fortnight._

_Grieved over the death of his brothers it was Sir Gawain who urged Arthur to war with Lancelot and the House Dulac and so the kingdom was torn apart by war as Arthur and his army marched on France to bring the traitors to justice._

_Of all the whispers about those battles there is none who will deny that there came a battle when a nameless knight, bearing the arms of the sons of Gwent, was struck down at Lancelot’s side. It is said that Lancelot rode his horse to its death bringing this man to the walls of an abbey and begged the sisters to save him. It is said that he staid by the man’s side until he breathed his last._

_Lancelot buried this son of Gwent with the shield of house Dulac and was thereafter always seen in battle carrying the shield of the house of Gwent._

_It was while Arthur’s war with Lancelot split the kingdom in two that Mordred seized the throne, turning many of Arthur’s vassals against him. It was sir Tristan who urged Arthur to put aside his enmity with Lancelot and rescue Camelot from the rule of Mordred and so the bloody campaign against the sons of France ended and Arthur began another to retake his throne._

_Mordred, aided by the powers of the dark god Erlik, decimated Arthur’s armies and the Merlin had a vision then of the crown tumbling from Arthur’s head and falling into never ending darkness._

_As he lay dying on a battlefield outside England sir Gawain knew the kingdom would be lost and in his last moments he penned a letter to Lancelot begging the other for forgiveness for his role in splitting up the men of Arthur’s circle. He begged his once friend to remember the bonds that they had once shared and to remember his love for Arthur and to help him now to restore his kingdom._

_Sir Gawain’s spirit came to Arthur in a dream on the night of his death. He told Arthur that Lancelot would come to him in thirty days and together they would see victory but, the spirit warned him, only if he waited, otherwise he would taste only the sting of death. Arthur hardly dared to believe that Lancelot would come to his aide but the vision was all the hope that he had._

_He went to Camlan to strike a temporary truce with Mordred and his armies, but Mordred along with King Marke, had heard of Arthur’s visions. Marke unbeknownst to the King had been plotting with Mordred for a chance at revenge against his nephew and the King he felt had betrayed him by shielding his errant wife. When a man in Mordred’s company drew his sword that day to kill a snake that slithered too close to his boot Marke took up arms and called for all his men to charge for their enemy attacked!_

_And so it was that many men fought their last battles at Camlan. Among them were Sir Tristan and the king men called the greatest the world ever knew. As Arthur lay dying beside the body of one son the other, Sir Bedwyr the Bran, held his hand. Into them Arthur laid his sword and his crown._

_“You must take them. You must let no one know the truth of their power or your blood or they will hunt you as they hunted me. Teach your sons to be better men than me and one day Camelot will be restored again. One day… one day my son… one day this will be made right… one day.”  
_

~*~*~

Adam was locked in a vicious battle with the one they called Hunter and they were under heavy fire. He tried not to think of Chandler or to wonder if Blaine was alright. He’d felt it when the Alpha had been wounded and he knew he’d feel it keenly if he lost either of them. He’d know, he reminded himself, forcing his concentration to remain on avoiding Hunter’s wicked claws and the jagged edges of his teeth. There was nothing he could do about the damn guns but hope not too many of those shots found their mark. A regular bullet wouldn’t slow him down much but too many of them (or one in the right place) and even a lycan’s strength could be tested.

As if called, a bullet grazed across his back burning his skin and throwing off his balance. Hunter took advantage and grabbed his shoulder with his teeth, yanking Adam down until he was belly up and going like a missile for the vulnerable tissue. As pain exploded inside him his senses were overwhelmed with the sight and sound of horses ridden by rows and rows of mud splattered men. Something glinted in the sunlight. An oddly familiar looking banner fluttered on the breeze. 

And then it was gone and he was still on his back in the middle of Westerville getting gutted and the only thing he could think about was how stupid it had been to save a kiss for the night he died.

But maybe he wasn’t going to because the next moment Rory and Trent were there attacking Hunter from both sides, and yeah he was bleeding pretty profusely and his stomach was probably hanging half out but he was still alive enough to think about it so it had to mean he had a chance right? He thought so anyway. There was something important he should be doing but the sad part was he couldn’t remember.

Rory and Trent were locked in combat with Hunter but the stray was older and stronger. They might even still have lost if Blaine hadn’t leaped on top of the smaller wolf and wrestled him to the ground with violent shakes. Together the three of them tore at the enemy wolf and Adam had the odd thought that he might be sick. He’d only ever been sick after one hunt and that was the day they’d had to hunt down his sister Kala. Tearing apart their own kin would do that to a person.

_“Are you okay? Shit I don’t know your name… Blaine! You’ve got a bleeder over here.”_ A nose nuzzled his side and a soothing tongue began to lick at his wounds, closing the ones it could. The brown face of a she-wolf appeared in front of his a moment later. Her muzzle was covered in blood and Adam had the even odder thought that Chandler would be really jealous that this woman had gotten to be the one to lick his wounds.

Then his Alpha stood above him and at a single soft command all Adam could think about was the change.

~*~*~*~

Jeff approached the house from the back, drawn to Nick's location by the emotions leaking through their bond. Nick's dark coat gleamed in the moonlight as he twisted and turned locked in a furious battle with Sebastian. Sebastian was leaner but bigger and stronger with the blood of Alpha leaders on his side. 

When Jeff bolted into the yard from the trees the alpha wolf had gotten a firm grip on the shoulder of Nick's left forleg and was dragging him to the ground. The yard was full of smoke and the putrid smell of burnt flesh stung in his nostrils but all Jeff had eyes or ears for was the sandy coated alpha wolf ripping into the man he loved. Nick’s pain was ghosting through him and if Jeff had been panicked in his holding room he was out right mad with fear now. 

As pain surged up between them the world seemed to grow suddenly quiet. His surroundings melted away replaced by a vision so rich in color it made his eyes ache. He was running through a field full of broken bloodied men. His skirts tore on rock, root, and the outstretched hand of a man pleading for mercy from death. His hair was flaxen and long, falling into his eyes and bouncing about as he ran. As he ran he called a name.

There was a boom of sound and just like that he was falling backward, the vision growing farther and farther away as if it had never been. He came back to himself only to see Sebastian lunging for Nick’s throat, his grisly maw covered in blood and Nick too weak to do more than accept death.

_“No!”_ Jeff cried, leaping on top of the other alpha. He aimed for Sebastian’s right shoulder, hearing his alpha-master's voice from lessons past reminding him to choose his wounds wisely. Anything above the neck would help him bring the bigger wolf to the ground but Sebastian had powerful legs, sharp claws and at least fifty more pounds on him. The only way to win was to start weakening him from the get go, make it harder for Sebastian to wound him and defend himself when Jeff did manage to get him grounded. 

But Sebastian was quick, twisting at the last moment so that Jeff’s teeth just barely grazed him and already intent on snapping back with his own powerful jaws. Jeff had to dance to avoid them, nearly toppling over in the process. If not for Nick limping to his feet and snapping at Sebastian’s rear, albeit weakly, Jeff would have fallen and given the older wolfs speed it probably would have been over. 

_“You betray me for him?!”_ Sebastian thundered, turning on Nick with a savage bite to his muzzle. Nick was too slow to prevent ether it or the rake of Sebastian’s claws along his body, and Jeff felt each blow down all the way to his core. Jeff, having regained his footing, leaped on the larger wolfs back, stretching to clamp his teeth around the back of his neck. He felt a savage joy when hair and blood filled his mouth and Sebastian let out a sharp bark of pain.

His victory was short lived however because Sebastian threw himself to the ground, taking Jeff with him and before the younger wolf could stop it Sebastian’s weight was rolling on top of him and then there were teeth around his throat.

As his body cried out in agony it happened again. A dark tunnel opened up in front of his eyes and everything fell away. He was _her_ again, leaning over the body of an armored man. He was weeping.

_“You cannot die! Not without knowing that the words I said to you when we parted were false. I love you Tristan. A hundred King’s and their orders could not shake that love. I would go with you and live as a beggar, only you must stay with me.”_

~*~*~  
Jeff was far away from this world when his attacker was thrown away from him. Sebastian hit the ground and rolled with a cry of pain. When he raised his head he came face to face with a snarling muzzle and he stilled. He had never seen the wolf towering over him. His silver coat was so light it could have been made of moonlight and Sebastian had never seen eyes either so cold or so bright a blue. 

The smell was what did it. 

_“Useless.”_ The sandy coated wolfs lips spread in what might have passed for a toothy grin on a human face. _Well I’ll guess we’ll find out how useless you really are won’t we?”_ Without further warning Sebastian lunged for the grey wolfs paws already working on getting to his feet when Kurt leaped away.

__

__TBC_ _

__

__A/N: *peeks out from hands* Everybody still breathing? Most of the carnage is over... But the questions remain, is Kurt going to beat Sebastian? Is Lina alright? Is Adam alright? Is Jeff dead? Is Blaine going to be able to smooth things over with the good citizens of Westerville? The vampires are coming and James has Kurt's family for reasons ashjksdkjdjkdlkl somebody wake me when it's over._ _

__On a more serious note I'd like to thank you for all being so patient with this story and my pressing work schedule. Nearly there guys._ _


	31. Chapter 29: First Test

Following a trail of gasoline was harder than she'd anticipated. For one thing, road ways were seeping in many different scents, from the fresh to the stale, and the most common of which was exhaust and gasoline. Picking out the freshest bits was like trying to separate the stale from the old in a bag of bread crumbs: doable but tedious and time consuming.

When the trail crossed with another line of gasoline fumes just outside of Dayton she nearly lost the abductors completely. The fresher trail was leading away from town and not wanting to lose them chasing a red herring she'd ignored it and spent several frustrating hours combing over Dayton after losing it at a gas station. 

The sun was lowering in the sky when Rachel began to get desperate. Her heart had sunken into her stomach, for the likelihood of finding Kurt's family was all but gone now and she could picture Noah's face all too keenly when she had to tell him she'd failed. She wanted nothing more in the world than not to have to do that, but the trail was cold and she was beginning to attract undue attention. She'd been slipping in and out of bushes and darting through yards for hours but she knew she'd overstayed her welcome when she overheard a public warning for a “wolf sighting” on a noisy television when a woman opened her back door to water a fat cactus in a pot on her porch.

When she spotted another wolf, this one with speckled brown fur, trailing her she _really_ knew it was time to leave. She was the intruder here and if the local pack decided they wanted to question her she'd be in real trouble then. Most packs (especially the rural ones) weren't kind when driving spies and strays away.

Rachel left town, mindful of the wolf following her and hoping that her pursuer would decide to let her leave peacefully. It wasn't until she was a couple of miles away that she remembered it wasn't far from there that she'd smelt another trail of gasoline leaving town this way. 

Was it possible that they had circled back this way? If they'd stopped at the station to have someone look at the leak and not found help they may have been forced to stop and wait to have their vehicle looked at. It was a small chance, but between a wild goose chase and facing Noah's devastated face she had to take it. She was still on another packs land, she had no problem smelling their scent markers and when she found the trail it only led her deeper into their territory.

She grew more and more anxious as the landscape became wooded and the trail led her to lane buried so deeply in trees it was almost hidden from the main road. At the end of the lane was an old wooden house, clearly in need of repair from natural wear and tear but well-kept and obviously lived in. There were wind chimes on the front porch and they seemed to tinkle success when she spotted a van wreaking heavily of gasoline parked in the front drive. 

~*~*~

_When Arthur married Guinevere Mwynfawr, princess of Gwent, bards sang of her beauty. Folks far and wide likened her to angels and the fae of old. Sir Lancelot of Dulac had stood with his brothers in arms behind their king as Arthur took his bride to wife that night and privately he thought that neither songs nor countless recountings he’d heard then or thereafter ever got it right._

_He’d seen her when she’d arrived in full parade and thought little more of her than he did most women (even the beautiful ones) but the night of the wedding she gave him pause. He almost believed her to be a vision. Was it that she seemed like sky and cloud with her alabaster skin wrapped in a gown the richest and softest of blues? Was it the way her piercing eyes were so perfectly framed by ringlets of hair so deep a brown it could have been soil at the riverbank that made him feel as if all the songs of love he’d ever heard did not do her justice?_

_Not precisely. He was not sure at all why he felt as if he could happily gaze upon her for that evening and the rest of forever, attempting to find words to describe her, only that he could. It certainly did not go unnoticed that night either that virtuous Lancelot, who had seen many a fair maiden and never been known to be moved by a single one, could not seem to find anything quite as captivating as the Princess of Gwent._

_“Why do you stare?” Guinevere asked when the shifting of the dance swept her hand into his. Her voice directed solely at him for the first time was a revelation, uncommonly low for a woman but soft as velvet. It made him think of the feeling of fine silk swathing his limbs._

_Arthur was on her left doing his best to appear like the glad husband but he had none who were close to him fooled and Lancelot knew him better than most. The king was unhappy and the woman’s hand was stiff in his. She was young, as most women were when they went to wife, and far from home now wedded to a stranger. He held her smaller hand in his firmly, touched by a deep sympathy for her, and for a time the lord of Dulac did not answer her, too caught up in the mystery of her callused palms and the power he felt coiled within her as her long nimble fingers curled against his palm._

_It was apparent to him at least that far from home or nay this was not a woman who would ever lack in courage and there was more, something else, that tickled at his mind as pieces of a puzzle spun about up there but he could not make any of it make sense._

_“I’ve heard you compared to a dove, a fairy, and even a snow drop this evening,” the knight heard himself admit almost before he’d decided to speak and the woman arched one haughty sable brow at him, clearly having decided he wasn’t going to answer her and surprised to hear him speak now._

_“You disagree?” There was defiance in her tone, as if she were challenging him, and Lancelot’s brow furrowed at the tone. Had he offended her somehow?_

_“Those things are all very pretty but they don’t describe you,” he tried to explain._

_The circle turned direction again and Lancelot almost tripped over his own feet as the princess, now queen (she was Arthur’s queen he should remember) attempted to jerk her hand from his with an incredulous expression that was only seconds to furious. She clearly did not know whether or not she was being insulted and as it was not Lancelot’s intention at all to insult her he rushed to beg her pardon._

_“It’s just that you are not pretty at all, not like other women… which is good! Women are a treasure but I’ve yet to be moved one way or the other by beauty alone, and it’s true nay? That people waste so much time flitting about after silly things? What is the beauty of a man really? Does it tell you the strength of his courage or the the sharpness of his wit? And yet we make so much of it. I think it would be bothersome to be treated as gently as one would a dove or something as frail as a snowflake simply because I was born with a fair face or to be treated poorly because my face was less than pleasant. I think you- that is men and women should be judged by something more, so you see… pretty does not describe you. Not adequately.” he babbled, and when he realized just how much of a fool he sounded he winced and snapped his mouth shut._

_“You don’t think I’m beautiful?” She still seemed stuck on this and Lancelot could have kicked himself for an oaf. He doubted this woman had ever gone a day in her life without being told that she was lovely and here he was all but calling her ugly. He knew well his reputation for charm, couldn’t really escape it, but he’d be laughed out of court if only they could all hear him now._

_Only… it was odd in the extreme but Lancelot did not think Guinevere was hurt by his words. Her surprise was evident to be sure, but judging by the fleeting gleam of delight that passed through her eyes he almost dared think she even might be pleased. How incredibly odd; what woman wanted to be thought ugly?_

_“How would you describe me then?” She asked, eager, blue eyes curious again and gazing up into his and Lancelot felt his heart thud painfully in his chest. It was hard to swallow past the lump suddenly lodged in his throat._

_What on earth was this? What was it about this woman that threw him off his stride and made him want to stand ever closer to her to take in her true scent beneath her perfumes and oils, to stare at her until he had every last detail of her committed to memory?_

_A bark of laughter from Gawain on his other side jolted him out of his thoughts and Lancelot looked away from the queen and swallowed again, this time to quell the strange feelings. He should figure out what he was playing at. It would do him good not to indulge such foolish thinking. This was a dangerous path to even think on._

_“I’m afraid I don’t know yet my lady,” he replied, and then he released her hand, stepping away from the chain of dancers. He ignored the way his palms burned and her eyes seemed to call him back. What he must remember was that the princess of Gwent was a princess no longer. She was a woman married, and to his liege lord no less. He must be nothing but glad of that. Otherwise she might be the ruin of him._

_~*~*~_

_Revelry from the wedding carried on long into the night. Lancelot and the other knights stayed to their cups when Arthur and his bride were carried off to their marriage bed and Lancelot had never been gladder for strong drink than he was while watching the boisterous display._

_If he’d thought her an oddity before Guinevere had him truly mystified now. She'd done that crown on top of her head proud as the unruly crowd had jostled and pinched at her, stripping her garment by garment like a goose to be roasted over the fire. She’d called for them to stop and she could have been any of the warrior maids from the old legends towering over the lot of them, glaring through the stark terror her eyes could not hide and the trembling that her lithe limbs betrayed._

_His hands had taken on a life of their own, reaching for the sword sheathed at his side and Christ, he did not know what he'd intended to do with it. Cut the lot of them down? It was fortunate perhaps that Arthur had been sober enough to notice his bride's predicament, ordering the crowd away and declaring that there would be no traditional bedding ceremony. A good man was Arthur. It was why Lancelot was proud to call him friend and why he was now resolutely determined to drown away his strange musings about his wife._

_“Your sour face is disrupting my good cheer Lancelot,” Gawain nearly bellowed in his ear, slapping him too heartily on the back as he and Sir Kay came up beside him, sandwiching him between their large sweaty bodies. “Arthur is finally married and probably well on his way to being mated by now.”_

_Lancelot tried to hush both men, glancing warily at the noblemen and women around them all making merry but they were paying him and his companions little mind. Still, it was unwise of Gawain to let his tongue wag so freely about the ways of the were-kin where any unfriendly ear could hear._

_“Aye, I'd drink to that,” Kay added with a grunt, blithely ignoring Lancelot's warning. His red beard was glistening where drink had trickled past his lips, testament that he was as deep in his cups as Gawain. At this rate they'd all be burned at the stake for demons by morning. “If we're lucky he'll be preoccupied between her thighs until the next moon and we won't have to go chasing him all over the damn kingdom. The Merlin might even give us some peace.”_

_Lancelot gave him a baleful stare and muttered halfheartedly that it was shameful for Kay to speak of his king in such a manner but he felt ridiculous even as the words left his mouth. Champion of chivalry or nay he wasn't usually such a bore. The truth was Arthur probably would keep the girl in bed once they'd mated. Lancelot would just really rather not think on it at the moment._

_“King or no king he's been a thorn lately, even you can't argue that Dulac.” Gawain grinned cheekily at him barking a laugh when Lancelot reluctantly nodded. Nudging his friend suggestively Gawain leaned over to whisper loudly in his ear, “A wolf needs a good mate, that's just the truth of it. Been feeling the itch myself. Haven't you?”_

_In truth he had. They would all forgive Arthur his ill temperament and his manic moods because there wasn't a one of them who wasn't feeling the pull to mate with each cycle of the moon. The sound of one of them wandering alone at howling longingly into the night was becoming so familiar even the villagers were talking about it; which was all very dangerous considering the risk to any of their kind at discovery. That's what made finding a mate so very difficult for Arthur and his circle. The chances of finding another of the were-kin were minimal at best when none dared reveal themselves. Wolf spirit could always be given but one had to be careful who they trusted. One word of their true nature to the wrong person would be disastrous._

_“What, the Lord of Chivalry?” Kay scoffed, knocking Lancelot’s shoulder with a mostly friendly smirk. “He wouldn't know what to do with a woman if she crawled into his lap and asked him pretty for it. And they do crawl don't they? Every woman in the kingdom panting after you and you're too holy to get your stick wet.”_

_“Is that jealousy I hear in your voice Kay?” Lancelot retorted with a snap. He and Kay had never had the easiest relationship. Lancelot had always suspected the man of jealousy. Arthur had fostered with Kay and before Lancelot Kay had been Arthur’s only friend and confident. Kay was in truth an overgrown boy at times who did not like to share his toys. “When was the last time a woman crawled into your lap who hadn't been paid to be there?”_

_Kay bristled at the words and Lancelot saw the wolf appear behind his eyes as a low growl rumbled in the bigger man's chest. They might have come to blows if not for Gawain._

_“Sheath your swords lads. We're all of us brothers aren't we? I think we're all jealous of Arthur. He is our king though, so we must forgive him being the first of us to find a proper submissive.”_

_“She's not submissive.” Lancelot heard himself say before he had even thought the words through, and that was twice now in one evening. Kay and Gawain blinked at him in respective shock, as surprised as he was to hear him say such a thing. Why had he said it at all? Lancelot felt heat rush into his cheeks. “Well, she may not be anyhow...she's not wolf yet so no one can say.”_

_“She's a woman,” Kay scoffed as if that said it all. “We are all of us dominant. Think you some wenches wolf will be stronger than ours?”_

_Lancelot could not say what told him that the queen's wolf spirit would be as dominant as any of theirs. He only knew that she made the beast within him stand to attention, an unprecedented reaction for him._

_Kay might have scoffed but Lancelot was proven right that very night, though not in a way he could have ever predicted. Not long later his chest burned hot and within his mind and the minds of the other knights the king's call came._

_‘All of you to me. Do not raise the suspicion of the guests. Let no one follow you'._

_Despite the drink clouding their heads they made their way quickly to the king's chambers, no more than two at a time as not to alert the revelers to whatever incident was occurring. Each of them feared the worst, unable to imagine what could have occurred between Arthur and his queen that would need their assistance._

_They feared finding a body, for each of them knew what the wolf was like and none of them had been through a claiming before but they could imagine how rough it might be on a fragile woman. The wolf could be provoked to savagery so easily._

_It was that fear that gave Lancelot’s feet such swiftness. He was the first to reach the king's chamber, and the sight that greeted him was a strange one. Arthur and the Merlin were standing beside the king's bed, both of them frowning down at Guinevere who was kneeling on the bed in naught but her shift. A hot surge of protectiveness went through Lancelot when he smelled her fear but he batted it away, urging himself to remember that it was Arthur whom he was here to protect and not some strange woman he barely knew. The woman had clearly done something wrong by the way that Ian was glowering at her._

_She did not cower beneath the wizard's gaze or the king’s, nor did she clutch the gaping folds of her shift to her body in modesty like one might expect a woman to do._

_In fact Lancelot saw quickly that she had nothing to be modest about for the chest beneath the sheer fabric though smooth and supple was also as flat as any man's. Lancelot was not the only man to stand there gaping like a fool but he had a good feeling he was the only one feeling a strange kind of relief._

_“God in heaven, she's a changeling!” Percival gaped from behind him and Arthur rolled his eyes toward the ceiling._

_“He is a man Percy, and an ordinary one at that.”_

_“The question is not what he is but who and why he poses as a woman,” Gawain admonished the band of men circling the king’s bed and Arthur nodded in agreement._

_“Speak up boy. Are you a spy from King Morgan? An assassin?”_

_Guinevere (though now Lancelot doubted that was truly his name) practically spat like a tom cat at Arthur's words._

_“I am no sword for hire. My blood is as noble as yours, mayhap more so given your parentage.” The boy's velvet voice washed over him again and for Lancelot it was like coming awake. Of course he was male. Some part of Lancelot had known that from the beginning and still the boy was so much more than he could put into words._

_Ignorant to the turmoil inside their companion a shocked gasp went through the half circle of knights and Lancelot was not surprised in the least when Kay surged forward, drawing his sword and snarling at the young man on the bed._

_“Shall I cut out this disrespectful dog's tongue Your Grace?”_

_Lancelot had his own sword drawn and was ready to intervene but Ian was already putting a staying hand on Kay’s arm. Lancelot looked to the king who curiously looked amused with the whole affair. Ian however looked far more cross as he muttered, “I wouldn't try it. The boy hides daggers as well as he hides his sex. As your king found out when he attempted to bed him.”_

_The boy on the bed flushed, casting an apologetic glance Arthur's way. “I am sorry. I meant to slip sleep powder in your drink but I never got the chance and when you kissed me I-I panicked.”_

_“You harmed our king?!” Sir Gawain demanded to know and Lancelot could feel the ire of the other's growing but his attention was captured by the strange conversation Arthur and the boy appeared to be having through glances. The boy's body was shaking despite the boldness he displayed meeting the king's eye and Arthur's gaze was warm as he regarded the younger man._

_“How old are you boy?” Arthur asked and the boy hesitated just the slightest before he answered._

_“Twenty summers Your Grace.”_

_Arthur barked a disbelieving laugh and shook his golden head._

_“If you’re going to lie to a king my lad I suggest you learn to do it better.”_

_“I wager thirteen and not a season more,” Lancelot’s cousin Bors muttered near his ear, loud enough for the boy to hear and he received an icy blue stare for his troubles._

_“Sixteen summers,” the boy admitted leaning heavily on the sixteen, no doubt for Bors benefit._

_“Sixteen?” Gawain gaped. “Christ boy you’re not old enough even to be knighted. Do you know the penalty for what you have done?”_

_“It is death, as surely as it would have come to my sister had my father’s will been done and she in my place,” the lad swiftly answered and a horrible suspicion began to creep over Lancelot and the other knights, suspicions that were confirmed when Ian spoke next. His voice was slow and startling to Lancelot and the others who so rarely heard it reach such a cadence, awestruck._

_“I know your face. I saw it during my visit to your father’s hall. You are Gwyn, Morgan’s son and heir.” When the boy, Gwyn, lowered his head the awe left the wizard’s face and it clouded with something closer to rage. “Fool boy! Do you have any idea what you have done, what ruin you have wrought with this game?!”_

_“I don’t play games!” Gwyn insisted. “I did it to save my sisters life and I know full well the price of it. My father had nothing to do with it and it is no plot to see you harmed… Your Grace,” Gwyn turned his gaze to Arthur then. His eyes plead more eloquently than his tongue could ever manage. The sight of them pulled at something within the heart of Lancelot and he did not think it was only him who was so affected. There was something about the boy’s determination, the strength he exuded despite his slender frame and youthful features. He was like Arthur, brushed by powers they could not understand, born to do things beyond even his own reckoning._

_He was David standing before Goliath as he gathered himself and addressed Arthur. He did not act at all as if he were nearly naked and weaponless, licking his dry lips and beseeching Arthur quietly with the reverence of a man who knew he could be killed at a word._

_“I know well the things that are said about the man who sired you. It is said that you can walk with wolves as he did, that madness runs in your blood and that you are touched by the dark god. I saw it in your eyes when you put your mouth to mine. I don’t know what you are my lord but it is certainly more than a man and my sister…” Gwyn swallowed thickly but none spoke, taking their cue from Arthur who watched him intently. “Guinevere is brave, and far stronger than anyone gives her credit for but she is a lady and often ill at that. She was born with shrunken lungs and does not breathe well. Yet for all that and the fact that she knows nothing of defending herself she would have tried to escape you. It’s against the law for a woman to run from her husband and treason for a queen to do so. What would you have done in my place?”_

_“I’d have counseled the girl to accept her fate, not thrown away my life on a fool’s escapade.” Ian snapped and without so much as a drop of fear for himself the prince of Gwent readily replied._

_“You commanded a child to come to your king’s bed because the stars and the bones you toss in the dirt commanded it. As if a woman has no will or want of her own. Well Guinevere Mwynfawr does, and it was her will to defy you and her brothers will to aid her. She is the blood of Mwynfawr and we do not suffer fate.”_

_The air seemed to suck out of the room as the wizard turned on the young prince, his body seeming to grow larger and take up more space as he loomed over the impossibly frail looking figure on the bed. Lancelot’s heart thudded wildly in his chest but he was held in place as if by invisible hands. Ian’s doing no doubt, as not a single body in the room moved._

_“Fortune favors the brave” the wizard recited, his tongue dancing delicately but precisely over the words as he spoke them. “It is the motto of your house isn’t it?”_

_“Aye,” the prince rasped through a throat tight with fear, his eyes blazing challenge._

_“You will be disgraced. You will be hanged. No one will believe that your father did not have a hand in this treachery and Arthur will be pushed into war with your people. Because of your ‘bravery’ the crown your father wears will topple from his head and be given to whatever vassal Arthur hopes will treat your people fairly. But it will be too late for all of those who lost their homes and their lives to war they never invited, won’t it? What do you think my lord? Will they be happy they sacrificed so much for your sister’s happiness? Knowing that you would be their king someday, their father, you did of course think of them when you started this noble venture?”_

_The prince’s face fell, crushed beneath the wizards words. His pale hands gripped the fabric of the shift only barely covering his thighs in a white knuckled grip as Ian finished with a final taunt, “I wish for their sake that you had a better notion of bravery.”_

_Lancelot pressed his lips together tightly; shaking with the urge to go to the prince whose despair he could feel emitting from him so keenly. The urge he had to be of comfort, to balance him, was not unprecedented. He had felt the same way when he had met Arthur and sworn to follow him. It was still different somehow. With Arthur the desire always came from a place inside that urged him to protect, to keep safe and honored that which was irrefutably priceless, a feeling not at all out of place at the feet of a king. With Gwyn…well with Gwyn it was hard to say. Lancelot barely recognized himself let alone his instincts when it came to Gwyn. It could mean nothing but trouble._

_And yet when Arthur lifted the boys shaking chin and the king’s somber expression slowly melted into a smile, Lancelot had never been so glad._

_~*~_

_“It's not right, the king bringing **him** ,” Sir Kay grumbled as he stomped into the practice yard that afternoon. Arthur’s inner circle had gathered there in secret, an unusual practice in itself. The reason behind the secret meeting had the collection of eagerly waiting knights buzzing with anticipatory conversation. It also happened to be the same reason for Kay's ill humor. _

_“He's already put the kingdom at risk and now he wants to take the boy into battle? We'll lose the war before the first weeks end mark my words. Arthur was a fool to keep him.”_

_“But Arthur did keep him Kay,” Lancelot reminded the man tactically while he tightened the ties on his armor. “Which means that the boy does rule here and he has more right to fight for the kingdom than even you.”_

_“He's a liability.” Kay insisted, glowering in Gwyn's direction. The prince was being assisted with his armor by one of Gawain’s younger brother’s, a tow headed lad who went by the name of Gareth. Though his face looked ashen there was a determined set to the prince’s shoulders that Lancelot could admire. He admired Gwyn even more when he got a glimpse of his buckler. It was comprised mostly of solid wood, the silver bolts and lined rim gleaming against the dark oak. Rising from the center was the head of a griffin, the standard of his house. No doubt the shield had been a gift from King Morgan and too prized for the boy to leave at home._

_Its presence on the field that day meant that Gwyn was fighting for more than the right to bear Arthur’s colors on the battlefield. Lancelot watched him lift the heavy shield with a grim expression. It had to be this way, for none of the other knights would respect Arthur’s choice of mate and fully accept Gwyn’s presence until he showed himself their equal, but taking up his sword against him still felt wrong somehow and it wasn’t just because of his youth. It was like an ill struck chord inside of Lancelot and he could not shake the strange feeling._

_“We can't trust him on the battlefield. King Morgan would betray his own mother and all know he's a coward who prefers others to do his dirty work,” Kay went on and Lancelot looked away from the young man across the field and back to his fellow knight. “I think the boy is here doing it. The king isn't safe with a man like that at his back.”_

_“You've said as much before. I believe you said he'd murder the king in his bed by nights end and how many moons ago was that? A boy is not his father Kay. Our king is proof enough of that.”_

_“Apples never fall too far from the tree, even Arthur.” Kay rebutted with a grunt, his broad shoulders flexing as he stuck his thin nose in the air. “Even if we could trust him Lancelot, which we can't mind you, we don't know what kind of fighter he is. Are we to put our king at risk relying on an untried boy?”_

_“That is the entire point of this exercise isn't it? Once the boy earns his sword Arthur can use him on the battlefield as he likes and if Arthur trusts him at his back then we've nothing more to say about it.”_

_“One battle doesn't make a boy a man. I trained for years for the right to call myself a knight.”_

_“Oh for god's sake Kay!” Lancelot barked, tempted to hit his companion over the head with the blunt hilt of his sword as he finished belting on his sheath. “He's a prince not the son of a goat herder. He'll have trained in a noble house, same as you and I, and as his heir King Morgan would knight him even if he had two left feet and clubs for hands. Here he is among strangers about to be pitted against an unbeaten knight. I daresay he will earn his stripes.”_

_Lancelot strode past the red haired warrior, tension snapping in the air between them like leather whips._

_“See that he does,” Kay muttered at his back and Lancelot glowered at him over his shoulder. He paused in his stride nonetheless even though he knew it was what the other man wanted. Kay's lips spread into an irritating smirk. “I'd hate to think of the only unbeaten knight in the entire realm losing such a vaunted reputation over something as foolish as sentiment.”_

_Lancelot bit back his initial response, wanting nothing more than to tell Kay exactly what he thought of his attitude and where he could place his concern for Lancelot’s title as champion but he stilled his tongue. Losing his temper would only amuse Kay._

_“I am a knight,” he reminded them both. “I live by my sword and there is nothing I take so serious as my reputation with it. I wouldn’t throw a battle to my own flesh and blood. It would certainly take something much stronger than sympathy for a friend.”_

_~*~*~_

_When Gwyn was fully armored the page who had been sent to assist him stared up at him in awe. The page was short even for a boy of ten seasons and Gwyn was a healthy height for a boy his own age so the lad had to crane his neck a bit._

_“Are you one of the queen’s men?” the tow headed youth questioned and the sound of his voice was a pleasant distraction from the churning of the older boy’s stomach._

_“I’m sorry?”_

_“Queen Guinevere’s colors are blue and black and there were griffins on her banner when she came to court for the wedding. Are you come from Gwent?” the boy clarified and Gwyn realized belatedly that dressed as he was the page boy would not think him a woman. As far as anyone stumbling upon this private gathering might assume, he was just another squire earning his title. His shield would raise an eyebrow or two, and that was in part of course the very reason Gwyn had dug it from his trunks._

_Let Kay and the others call him weak and try to shame him for hiding as a woman. He would prove to them that he was as much a man as they were and that he, skirt or no damn skirt, was someone to be feared._

_“Aye I am. Now that I’m here I wish to be knighted and serve my lady with Arthur’s men,” Gwyn spun a likely tale, knowing that the young page would not share the same schedule or lodgings as the older squires and was not likely to have much free time to verify his story. The boy seemed to accept it without any suspicion, still awestruck by the gleam and obvious expense of his armor._

_“What do they call you?”_

_“Gwyn of... well just Gwyn actually. What do they call you?”_

_“Gareth. Sir Gawain is my brother and one day I shall squire for him, and soon after that I shall slay a dragon and Arthur will knight me, just as he knighted Lancelot after he slayed the giant Orlac. Did you know he slayed a giant? I wasn’t there but sir Ector was and he says that Lancelot fought forty men and slew Orlac the terrible in a single blow and Arthur knighted him right beside the giants head.”_

_Judging by the boys excitable chatter and the gleam of nearly manic hero worship in his eyes Gwyn did not think it wise to take Gareth’s story for gospel but he had indeed heard stories of Lancelot’s triumphs. Everyone had. He had never been defeated, ergo his being champion. Hearing he was a giant slayer wasn’t exactly helping calm Gwyn’s nerves any._

_“At least he didn’t do it with stones,” Gwyn muttered to himself and Gareth chuckled._

_“David and Goliath? Nah, it wasn’t so miraculous as that, but that’s well enough, Lancelot doesn’t want to be a king. He’s always saying so. Pity that though. Did you know they say King David danced naked after a victory in battle?”_

_Gwyn flushed. His head filling with imaginings, pictures of the tall, strong, knight who had no earthly right to be quite as handsome as he was naked and sleek with sweat from his exploits, flitting about up there in his imagination and wreaking havoc._

_Fearfully he shook his head to clear it, busying himself with armor that was well enough in place._

_He had always been plagued by his looks. His taste for his own sex was just one more black stain. He had expected to have to wed some poor women and do his duty to his name and his bloodline so it was a stroke of mad lucky really that he was forced now to pretend to be female and could lay with a man openly. He must not ruin it with wayward lusting or he would find himself tied to a stake. Gwyn glanced nervously at the younger boy wondering if he had seen anything on his face that might have planted the suspicion in his mind that he was an abomination but Gareth just grinned slyly at him and if he thought something he didn’t say so._

_“Are you worried about the match? You needn’t, I can’t see anyone expectin you to beat him. It’s the Merlin and the King who will judge whether or not you fought worthy and they are fair judges.”_

_“I have no doubt…” Gwyn allowed and then with a sour look in the wizard’s direction he muttered, “Except I really doubt your wizard likes me._

_“It won’t matter.” Young Gareth waved away his concern. “The last squire that had the misfortune of fighting the champion stayed upright less than a minute. Keep him after you for ten and no one will doubt you’re a knight then.”_

_“Right,” Gwyn swallowed thickly, eyeing Lancelot’s armored figure as the knight strode into the middle of the practice ring. “I have the feeling that is much easier to say than to do my friend.”_

Gwyn had no idea what an understatement his words were until he countered the first blow of Lancelot’s blade and the force of the swing reverberated up his arm and he thought that every bone in it might splinter. 

~*~*~

That Night

Police Chief Max Swanson had been with the Westerville Police Department for ten years. The day he'd joined the force the old chief had looked him in the eye with a kind of tiredness that Max hadn't understood back then and told him that his good days were about to become bad days and his bad days nightmares.

_“You’re the only thing standing between someone else and tragedy. You're giving up the right to have a good day. Maybe you'll get lucky and they'll call you a hero. Most of them wont. Most of them will hate you just for doing your job.”_

Today was a bad day.

They were surrounded by a row of giant wolves; he had six guys down and a bunch of dead kids on his hands. He’d ordered a cease fire in order to reason with the rogue band of subhumans, if there was anything really human in them to reason with. He didn’t think so. There was half a body lying on the ground not even a foot away, half of some kid who hadn’t done anybody any wrong except get in the path of these _things_ , but it was protocol. 

“I repeat” he shouted over the megaphone at the band of wolves, a dozen gleaming eyes boring into his with a cold sort of hunger that made his palms sweat. “Abandon your wolf skins and lay down with your hands on top of your heads.”

Werewolves couldn’t make human sounds but Max swore the big black one who seemed to be their leader scoffed at him. The big brute let out a long harsh puff of breath and shook out his dark fur, and droplets flew as it cleared its golden eyes free of blood and sweat. The motion had the guys raising their guns and fingers squeezing dangerously on their triggers.

“Stand down guys,” he warned them. Once they started shooting again there would be no going back. Max had seen what werewolves could do in a fight. A single bullet wouldn’t take them down, maybe not even a dozen. Evidence of their strength was littered all over the campus grounds in bloody pieces. 

_“We haven’t committed any crime, Swanson. I see no reason to let you arrest us.”_

Max had heard of course that they could do this, but hearing a stranger’s voice in his head still caused him to jump and a cold shiver to go down his spine. Talk about disturbing. He recognized the voice as Blaine Anderson, Alpha of the pack. They’d met on a few official occasions but always when Anderson looked deceptively like a man. Young though, only a few years older than these college kids whose lives he and his people had just torn to bits. A charming kid with serious eyes and pretty words promising there would be no trouble from him and his kind. There was no trace of that now. The black wolf was immense and he was staring into Max like he could see right through his skin and wanted to eat his heart out. Max swallowed thickly.

Creepy or not he could deal with the Alpha. Maybe there was a man in there who could be reached after all.

“Look around you, Anderson. You see those bodies?” Max’s throat tightened with anger as he gestured to the mangled bodies lying near between them. “You don’t call this a crime?”

_“It’s a great crime. But the wolves of Westerville are not to blame for it and without us people would still be dying.”_

Max frowned, the Alpha’s answer puzzling him.

“You trying to tell me it wasn’t your people who did this?”

_“Yes.”_

“Don’t buy it Chief,” Tyrell Michaels warned. Max shot him a quelling glare and turned back to Blaine.

“You have a good reason why I should believe this didn’t start with you?”

_“None at all.”_

The answer, though not what he expected, actually made Max start to believe him. Blaine didn’t try at all to argue his case. He knew where this was ending and had already accepted it. Max glanced around at his guys and felt a moment’s pity, wondering which ones would make it back to the station and which families would be getting phone calls.

Tyrell caught his eye and slowly nodded, scared shitless but ready to do his duty. Or so he thought. They all thought they were ready to die until it came to the dying part.

“Then we’re done talking,” Max snapped, body already tensing for action. “You’re under arrest. Come out of the wolf skins in three or we open fire.”

~*~*~

The tan wolf lunged at his face and Kurt scrambled backward, Sebastian's sharp teeth just grazing skin and hot breath washing over his face. 

_Strike, force him to move. If you stay on the defensive eventually you'll fall._

He didn't know whether it was something he remembered from training or just something Blaine knew, but either way it was his and knowing it saved his life. He let instinct carry him forward, springing off his hind legs and lunging for his opponent’s sandy shoulder before Sebastian could continue to press him backward and cause him to stumble. 

Sebastian twisted away with a growl, following the movement with a spring so quick Kurt's eyes barely caught it before the larger wolf's jaws were snapping at his flank. 

_Forward, turn, head down and keep away from his teeth. Aim for his legs._

Kurt twisted, snapping at Sebastian's legs. The bigger wolf was quick, rearing up on his hind legs in a position that would have made him vulnerable if not for his speed and the sheer size and strength of his body. Hitting the alpha wolfs solid wall of muscle was like hitting a brick wall, a dizzying reminder of lycan strength and stamina. Kurt's momentum drove him into the pocket between Sebastian’s hind and front legs as the alpha twisted his torso and let his heavy weight bear down on top of his smaller opponent. He didn't let a second of his advantage go to waste, raking with his claws and biting at the back of Kurt's exposed neck. 

Kurt whined as pain blossomed in his neck and he scrambled desperately in the hold of Sebastian's teeth feeling the wet trickle of blood in his fur. Sebastian’s dark amusement coiled around him like rope.

_“That was even more pathetic than I expected,”_ his voice slid through Kurt’s mind accompanied by a low insidious chuckle. _“Give it up Useless. Lay down and Daddy will make this quick.”_

The words were heavy with power and to Kurt's horror he felt his body slow, his senses dulled by the insistent push of Sebastian's dominance and the other wolf's laughter only got louder in his mind. Despite the fierce grip he had on Kurt's neck he wasn't even attempting to wrestle him to the ground anymore, getting far too much enjoyment out of dominating him. 

Sebastian would love to boast he'd forced Blaine's mate to submit to him before killing him, to be the one that proved all the others right that Kurt deserved the cruel nickname of 'useless', to wound Blaine in a way that he would never recover from...

No! That wasn't going to happen. Not so long as there was fight left in him and Kurt had just barely begun to fight.

He, panted, struggling to ignore the instinct to lay down and the even less helpful one to panic and tried to shake loose from the larger wolf's grip. The effort was futile, his strength draining from him as the weight in his head got heavier and heavier and his submissive instincts told him not to fight it. 

A peppered blur leapt onto Sebastian’s side and the larger wolfs teeth tore free from Kurt’s neck and he stumbled forward, crumpling on the ground as he panted for breath and fought to clear his head enough to get his bearings.

Chandler and Sebastian were locked in a vicious fight, both bodies turning in circles as the younger wolf darted and dived about, attempting to avoid the stronger alpha’s teeth and claws and exhaust him. Kurt scrambled back to his feet, charging forward to help his friend just as Sebastian knocked the younger wolf off his feet and would have lunged for his neck.

Kurt leapt on his hind quarters, biting savagely at Sebastian’s back. Sebastian snarled and grunted in pain, shaking vehemently until he'd knocked Kurt loose and the smaller wolf fell to the ground with a jarring thud, pain wrenching in his injured neck and splintering down his spine. There was no time to get back to his feet before Sebastian's heavy weight was slamming into his side like a freight truck. He heard the crunch of bone as more pain radiated through his side and the sound of his own scream was sharp and shrill as it echoed in his head. 

_“I'm going to enjoy killing you Useless,”_ Sebastian snarled as he grabbed the back of Kurt's throat and dragged him a good foot, just for the torture of it. Kurt wriggled helpless, the pain from Sebastian's teeth splintering in his skull. _“Anderson is going to regret the day he chose a worthless little nothing like you over his own kind!”_

He heard a violent explosion of gunfire but the sounds meant nothing to him being dragged about as he was by Sebastian’s jaws, the terrible pressure on his throat overwhelming even the sensation of pain from teeth sunk deep in his muscle. He had the wild and somewhat distant realization that death could come within a blink now. He was only glad Blaine wasn't here for it. He wondered how much longer it would be before Blaine wouldn't be able to hold back anymore and prayed it wouldn’t be until it was too late. How much would Blaine feel of it if it happened?

_You can’t give up! Trust the wolf. Trust us. We are stronger than him._ The voice was his and not his, Blaine's and not Blaine's, maybe best described as theirs. Well they were right. It wasn’t over yet and he couldn’t just give up.

Kurt blocked the pain, the fear, and everything else out, concentrating on that voice and forcing himself to breath as deeply as he could.

_Rear up, fall backward, twist to the right, head down, protect your throat._

Sebastian’s taunting laughter was cut short with a startled yelp when Kurt unexpectedly bucked and then threw his entire weight backward. He had to accept the vulnerability of being on his back with his legs in the air, and knew he could not count on his weight to pin the larger wolf. Kurt ignored the screaming of his neck muscles and twisted franticly, not quite able to avoid the flailing of Sebastian’s erratic limbs as the other wolf reacted instinctively to being on his back underneath an enemy, desperate to shield his vulnerable underbelly.

Kurt ignored the slashing of his claws and the wounds they opened up, biting at whatever he could reach with quick snaps as he rolled onto his stomach. By some stroke of luck he got a grip on the skin around Sebastian's neck and even though it was loose and not prone to bleeding much Kurt knew that with a firm enough hold he could do the kind of damage Sebastian had done to him.

The motion was so painful that Kurt’s movements were stuttered and poorly coordinated but by some miracle he managed to get a firm hold and Sebastian's pain filled cry filling his ears as he shook his head back and forth, was all the reward in the world. His cries were exhilarating. They sang in his blood sweeter than any music he'd ever heard. His blood surged, energy zinging through every nerve ending like an electric current. All pain forgotten with the thrill of hunt surging in his veins he twisted his head with a vicious motion, his mouth filling with the taste of blood as he tore away skin and muscle. 

He heard a whine over Sebastian's howl of pain and so shocking was the sensation of power rushing through him that he almost didn't put together that the sound had come from him. 

His head had started to pound, his vision doubling, and that was familiar enough for him to reason that the sudden surge of strength he'd felt was Blaine's, an alpha's strength, _the_ Alpha’s strength.

When Sebastian twisted weakly onto his side he found the grey wolf's muzzle only inches from his. His face was twisted in a fanged snarl, his unusually light coat silver in the moonlight and hackles raised. But it wasn't the show of glistening teeth, the hair raising growl rumbling in his chest, or the aggressive jut to his ears that made Sebastian Smythe go still.

It was the iron grip of control in the beta wolf’s voice when he ordered him to do it, the way Sebastian felt as if his body was suddenly cemented in place. He'd never felt anything that powerful touch him before nor seen anything quite as eerier as the brilliant icy blue of the beta’s stare.

As for Kurt, his head was spinning. Inside there was an uncomfortable spreading sensation as if his mind were unfurling like a flower, his energy spreading out and enveloping everything in sight. 

He could hear Sebastian's heart beating rapidly in his chest only inches away, hear the blood coursing through his veins and taste the fear radiating off him on his tongue as the power within him spread outwards. He felt each of Lina's slow unconscious breaths, Chandler's frantic thoughts as he fought with the two policemen who had entered the back of the yard, the fury and pain radiating off those fighting with police in the front and the terror of the policemen whose orders sent them to clash with a superior foe.

A mated pair was struggling to reach the back yard through a wall of police men. A bullet had already injured the female. Their thoughts were red with pain and grief. Kurt instantly knew them to be Jeff's parents. They and more of the pack would be hurt or killed if they continued to attack the police. The block was erupting in chaos and Blaine wasn't here to give them direction. They needed a leader… Kurt would just have to do. 

But first there was the MacTere's Alpha to deal with.

*~*

Unnerving blue eyes bore into Sebastian, so intense he believed they could peel back hair and skin to peer into the depths of him. That stare made something down to his core shudder in fear. They pulled him in, dragging him down a long black tunnel until brilliant color exploded in front of his eyes and he was somewhere else, _someone_ else staring down at a pale faced boy with frightened blue eyes and a hair of riotous blond curls. He knew he was irritated with the kid, jealous even, but there was something inside him that gravitated to the hope he saw in his eyes. He extended out his hand to the boy and he wondered if it was right for anyone to look at him with such adoration, such innocent belief. 

_“What do they call you, Scrawny?”_ A voice asked, his voice and _not_ his voice. The boy smiled at him, eyes wide and luminous before he replied.

_“Arthur.”_

The name was still echoing in Sebastian’s head when the brilliant world he'd been in was swallowed by darkness and he was yanked back through the tunnel. He came back to himself with a jerk, his senses jarred and nausea coming on so swift he heaved. Above him Kurt's mouth opened, his warning growl growing louder and Sebastian felt with every fiber the wolf prepared to lunge.

He had thought he was prepared to die, but when the moment came he found that it wasn't true at all. He'd been kidding himself. He'd never wanted death. What he truly wanted had been torn from him and there was no getting it back.

_“Please.”_

The plea bubbled up like a pot set to boil, no holding it back, but he offered the looming figure above him nothing more.

Kurt stared at him unblinking.

_“Don’t move.”_ It was all Kurt said before he turned away, running to join his friend but the words laid on Sebastian so heavy he had no doubt that he wouldn’t.

~*~*~*~

It took more time than Blaine would have liked to subdue the police squad. He took a bullet to his shoulder during the first volley. If not for Chief Swanson’s presence it would have been over at the first command. Dominating humans was typically easier than dominating wolves because most humans were trained from early age to be follower’s rather than leaders but Chief Swanson was certainly the exception and his men had strong bonds with him.

They stood down when Blaine and Santana tore a hole through their circle and Blaine leapt on top of Swanson’s chest and gave his order again along with a private warning that he and all his men would die if he didn’t.

_“Think of their families, Swanson. Nobody else has to die today.”_

This time the human male went still, glaring at him defiantly, but none the less he gave the order for his men to halt their fire.

_“Good. Make sure they stay put. If you follow us you’re dead. Understood?”_

“We can’t forget this you know. The town, the government, they’re not going to forget this,” Swanson warned him. Right then Blaine missed having shoulders to shrug. What was there really to say to that? It was done.

He ambled off the police chief and signaled to the others to follow him.

_“We need to get back to the forest. Those of you who are able help the injured. Leave the dead. Santana will you help?”_ He looked to the brown coated she-wolf whose ears perked up at attention and took it for the yes that it was.

~**~*~*

Calvin heard the police sirens long before he saw the flashing lights or the carnage on Lina’s front of the lawn. A row of squad cars were blocking the street in front of the house and the police had set up a barricade of uniformed men with bullet proof shields. From his vantage point across the neighbor’s lawn Calvin could see that the wolves currently facing off with the Westerville police were pack, recognizing Noelle and Luke right away. The MacTere wolves lay dead with a few of the Westerville Guard beside them. 

He didn't see Jeff or Sebastian anywhere but he could hear fighting coming from the back of the house. There was no getting to them without getting around the police, at least not from this direction. One of the uniformed men handed a guy with an air of authority to him a megaphone and the guy started ordering Noelle and the others to stand down and come out of their wolves because they were under arrest. If Calvin had been in a human form he would have snorted. 

The only reason any of them put up with human law was because Blaine insisted they had to in order to keep the peace and not aggravate the humans they shared land with but that line stopped long before allowing themselves to be handcuffed and locked away in a dingy cell somewhere. Never mind that such a capture would be hell for any one of them, they all knew what happened to subhuman’s in government custody. 

It wasn’t long before they were shooting again and with police opening up gunfire on the street it was enough for the others to abandon the Alpha’s orders and come out of their houses. No way were they letting humans invade their territory and drag their own away or some stray bullet hit a cub. 

Calvin recognized Jeff’s parents when they rushed into the fray and he could tell by their frantic auras that something was very very wrong. It made his belly clench up tight with fear because they were fighting with everything they had to get to the back of the house and Calvin could only think of one reason why they would do that.

Jeff must be hurt. There was no telling if Sebastian was okay. Probably not since Noelle and the others were showing signs of flagging energy and serious injury as they clashed with the armored police and took bullets that they weren’t in any real shape to take after fighting the MacTere. He saw a body that looked like Rory’s go crashing against a police shield and then lay unmoving on the ground and the bottom fell out of his stomach. 

He had to help somehow. He had to stop the police but they were just as likely to shoot him if he rushed out there and his body was much smaller and frailer than a grown wolf. Not for the first time Calvin cursed being a cub. 

Maybe they’d hesitate to shoot one?

Probably not he thought as he watched Joe leap onto a guy and crunch his face, the guy next to him turning to ram his back with the butt of his gun.

They might not be too bothered to shoot a cub, he reasoned, but they might not be able to help pausing before shooting a kid. At least he hoped so.

Without much further thought Calvin shifted. He shifted faster than he ever had before and gasped at the stinging all over his body, panting for breath as he scrambled onto two quivering legs. He was naked, which might be a dead giveaway if anyone really thought about it, but who had time to think in the middle of a wild battle? Besides, he didn’t have time to search for any clothes and if there was one thing Calvin knew how to do it was improvise. 

With a deep breath Calvin ran towards Lina’s front yard screaming for help.

The gunshots were so loud in his ears they made his heart jump in his throat. He had no idea how close he came to being shot down but his keen senses were screaming as the heat of bullets brushed against his sensitive skin and he tripped and when something bit him on the side he stumbled, crashing to the ground with a scream of pain. He curled into a ball on the grass, clutching his side and biting back the desperate sobs that choked up his throat. 

No crying. No fear. Wolves are not prey, he reminded himself, biting his tongue so hard blood mixed with the salt of his tears.

“Cease fire!” A voice thundered over the exploding guns and then it boomed again. “Goddamn it! Cease fire there’s a kid!” 

When Calvin felt a warm body stand over him he tensed, pain shooting through him so hot and intense he couldn’t hold back a small cry no matter how hard he tried, but he relaxed some when he got a whiff of its owners scent. It was Kurt and the big grey wolf was using his body to shield him as the cry for a cease fire went ignored by those still locked in combat with members of the pack.

_“Stand down!”_ Kurt’s voice boomed inside his skull and Calvin’s whole body jerked with the brush of power and then resolutely froze under the command. _“All of you, to me!”_

One by one the others froze, some of them still gripping their victims between their jaws as they turned to stare at the beta wolf, silent and still as statues. Just like that the block was deathly quiet, quiet enough to hear a pin drop.

Calvin stared at the silver coated wolf standing over him in silent awe. He’d never heard Kurt’s voice sound like that, or anyone elses for that matter, except maybe Blaine. It was deep and layered as if something ancient and powerful were talking over and under him and every syllable that he uttered drained at Calvin’s will and pushed him to obey. 

His mouth dropped open when the others dropped their prey and walked to Kurt with bellies low to the ground and ears flat with chagrin. The submission was clear in every line of their bodies and it wasn’t just the wolves either. The remaining policemen were just standing there staring at Kurt with pale stupefied faces, like robots waiting for orders. Calvin watched Kurt amble over to the nearest policeman, the guy who had been holding the megaphone earlier and the two had a face off until the snap of Kurt’s jaw only inches from his face sent the guy stumbling backwards.

_“You are not the law here. I am and you’re not arresting anybody.”_ If the guy was shocked to have a wolf speak to him he didn’t show it. He barely moved but to nod slowly, every line and dip of his body exuding submission. 

_“You can come back for your dead in the morning,”_ Kurt ordered. _“Now get out.”_

And to Calvin’s everlasting shock, they did. He wanted to ask Kurt how he did it, but the trouble with that was there were black spots popping up all over his vision.

~*~*~*~

Kurt waited for the police to gather their injured and limp away. He waited until the lights from the last vehicle had disappeared and he could no longer here the hum of their engines before he finally relaxed enough to look back. As it sank in that it might well and truly be over the painful pressure in his skull receded, gladly letting the power he’d wielded only moments before drain away. It left him exhausted. With its departure it seemed that his body chose that moment to remind him of every injury, including the cracked ribs, and suddenly he slumped, unable to hold himself up without the aid of the strength he’d borrowed from his mate. 

“Kurt?” Noelle appeared on his right, then Chandler on his left both of them human shaped and bare skinned, staring down at him with worried eyes. 

Kurt only whimpered in reply, struggling to breath past the overwhelming amount of pain hitting him all at once. 

“You’ve got to shift, Kurt,” Chandler urged him, nudging his shoulder gently. His blond hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat and there were streaks of blood and dirt covering his skin left over from the fight that shifting could not get rid of.

Shifting would however fix his ribs and the bites and bruises; but not without pain, Kurt knew and truth be told he didn’t want any more pain. He must have looked outright miserable because Luke and two alphas Kurt didn’t recognize pressed up against him, nuzzling him with their snouts and licking at his wounds to alleviate some of the sting from his cuts.

“Come on Big Guy,” Noelle encouraged with a tired smile. “Are you really going to give up now, after a show like that? It’s not curtain call yet.”

A theater reference: he had no idea why but he loved her in that moment. She’d never been unkind to him but something about it, even something as little as that made him feel more like opening his eyes. And if not that then Chandler’s next words certainly sealed it.

“Blaine’s on his way,” he announced to the group. Lowering his voice he added more pointedly to Kurt, you’ll want to be a certain shape when you reunite. I know I certainly would.” 

_Blaine_

He thought his name and just like that the wall between their minds came crashing down and Blaine was there, reaching for him, coming for him and Kurt let go of all of the tension in his body. He forgot the pain entirely as he shifted. It was there in the back of his mind as his body yanked ruptured veins and wrenched cracked bones into a new shape but he was removed from it. Kurt was in a safe place where the world turned to the hum and rhythm of two steady heart beats, where the air smelled like skin and cotton sheets and he was wrapped up in warmth and the knowledge that what was missing was returning to him.

When it was over he lay catching his breath and staring up at the night sky with a dozen or so faces staring down at him. Most of them he only recognized in passing as guard members he’d been introduced to and Lina’s neighbors, but all of them were watching him with expectation and to Kurt’s surprise something quite like awe.

“Are you alright Sir?” an alpha male he didn’t quite remember the name of and for a moment Kurt didn’t reply, tripping over the title and the unmistakable respect behind it. The man’s voice was hesitant and a bit unsure but his smile was friendly and earnest when Kurt nodded. 

Noelle was right. He’d taken control of this crazy train and now everyone was looking at him like he was the guy who knew what to do (and what a terrifying thing that was) so he might as well act like he did. His throat was dry and his voice came out croaked when he asked, “How are the others? Who else is hurt?”

_“Ten dead, numerous injured”_ Luke reported with a hollow voice. _“Calvin is wounded and losing too much blood. We need to get him to Quinn, Kurt, he belongs to an Alpha family. It won’t mean good things if he dies.”_

Kurt nodded weakly. Right, he remembered. Calvin was a Pack Alpha’s son which meant politics. He attempted to sit up and groaned at the aching of his muscles.

“Jesus,” he cursed as he flopped back down. At the worried glances of the others he shook his head, offering a self-depreciating smile, embarrassed at his own weakness. “No… get Calvin and everyone else ready to move. I’m fine. I just overdid it.”

A couple of pack members whose names escaped him moved to help with the injured but Chandler and a few of the others stayed put, clearly unconvinced that Kurt was as alright as he said he was. The teen heaved a sigh in relief and tackled Kurt in a crushing hug as soon as he’d managed sitting up. “You kicked ass! I almost piddled when you pulled out the Alpha voice. It’s dead sexy. Oh my god I still can’t believe we’re alive, my whole life flashed before my eyes when- ”

“Chandler!” The teenagers enthusiastic recounting of the battle was interrupted by a woman’s voice. They all turned to watch as a moment later a heavily pregnant blond woman with a round face darted from across a neighbor’s yard to grab the teenager up in a hug to rival his most enthusiastic.

“Oh thank god. I felt you get hurt but your father wouldn’t let me leave the house,” the woman said as she crushed the young man to her chest. An ashy haired man with a haggard looking expression joined them, prying Chandler from his mother’s grip. 

“Let the boy breathe Minny.” Chandler’s father ignored his mate’s baleful expression as he examined Chandler with the calm yet desperate eye that only a parent could manage. “You’re alright aren’t you?”

Kurt didn’t get to hear his reply. At that moment there was a cold rush of air on his back and then as if the air had squeezed him out of nothing Ian appeared with a faint pop.

He glanced around at the small crowd of men and women and then down to Kurt with an assessing gaze. As Kurt’s lips dipped into a glower the wizard’s tilted into a smile.

“That was well done, Mr. Hummel. Well done indeed. But then again I never expected less.”

“Is that all you have to say?” Kurt demanded, climbing awkwardly to his feet with some help from Noelle and Lina’s neighbor. He ignored the complaints of his exhausted smarting limbs and the urge he had to sit back down and gestured wildly to all their bloodied and dirt streaked faces. “You show up after all of this and that’s all you have to say. ‘Good job not dying’?” 

“You’re angry?” Ian asked slowly. “Is it because you think I abandoned you in your time of need?”

“I don’t think, I know!” Kurt insisted.

“You know so little, Mr. Hummel.” Ian said it so gently, like a reminder, but it still felt like a dismissal when the wizard turned his back and began to stride for the back of the house. Kurt grit his teeth in frustration, a low growl rumbling in his throat before Ian’s direction made him remember that he’d left Lina unconscious back there with Sebastian.

“Noelle, help Luke start rounding up the neighborhood,” he instructed before he turned to follow Ian. “We need to get everyone in the forest.”

“Sir?” Luke wasn’t the only one who stared at him confused.

“Those are dead people,” Kurt reminded them all gesturing to the body of a young uniformed woman who was missing a good part of her throat. “There are more dead people in town no doubt and I don’t know everything but I do know this is bad. There will be news vans soon, I’m surprised there aren’t already, and a public outcry. The government isn’t just going to let this go. They can’t. That means… it means a lot of things. Most importantly that the police will be back. We’re safer in the forest right? So get everyone in the forest.”

“We have to leave our homes?” Chandler’s mother asked, her voice high and fearful and Kurt saw her press closely to her mate, Chandler’s father pulling her to his side and holding her tightly. Alpha-omega pair Kurt’s brain catalogued with a sniff and he did his best to sound reassuring when he nodded and promised his friend’s mother that everything would be okay.

He was far less certain when he and Chandler left the others to rally the neighborhood and followed Ian to the back of the house to find the old man leaning over two still forms. Someone had shut the sprinklers off he saw, and Lina was awake. She was sitting up now with a somewhat lost expression and Kurt breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of her alive and mostly whole with Benito in her arms. The boy was still fast asleep and she was clutching him fearfully to her chest.

“Are you alright?” Kurt asked and his heart jumped when she slowly shook her head.

“He won’t wake. I have tried but he will not answer me.” The tears he saw welling in her eyes made it wrench in his chest and he flushed with guilt.

“Oh god, Lina no, he isn’t hurt. I put him to sleep.” Kurt rushed to reassure her. “I just didn’t realize how strong Blaine is…” His voice faded, still guilt ridden as he watched Lina shudder in relief and press her face against the cubs fur, murmuring what sounded like a thank you over and over.

Kurt didn’t want to be thanked, not after he’d stood up in the attic so long watching her get beat up, watching Sebastian hurt her and threaten her with such horrible things. He smoothed back the dark hair from her brow, sending her warmth and allowing her to lean into his chest as her sobs slowly but surely quieted.

_“It’s over now. You’re both safe. You were incredible back there. You’re incredible and strong and you and Benito are both going to be okay.”_

After some time when Lina was calmer Ian made a sound, a decisive sounding hum. The wizard was weaving his hands over the forms of the two dead young men in complicated patterns, muttering words that Kurt did not understand. His hands began glowing a soft blue light and Kurt felt a chill go over him, uncertain of Ian and his magic.

“It’s interesting,” the wizard mused. “That you would account everything you accomplished tonight to your mate and none of it to yourself.”

“Because I _did_ use Blaine’s strength,” Kurt replied approaching Ian carefully. He spared a wary glance at the large sandy wolf lying not far from them, watching them with intelligent eyes. He was amazed really that his command was still holding Sebastian there. “Without Blaine’s power I’d have been toast. That’s just the truth.”

“Do you really think you bring nothing to your combined strengths?” Ian sounded amused now. “Blaine’s power is not something just anyone can use. Chandler, Lina, brave as they are, would they have fared so well?”

“I don’t know and we’ll never know, Ian. Blaine didn’t mate with them. He mated with me.”

“That’s right. And this is the outcome.”

Kurt flinched and Ian grabbed his hand by the wrist, the skin of his palms soft but the grip tight and unflinching.

“You saved this woman and her child, you saved many of Blaine’s people, and lest you forget you saved yourself. It’s not a bad outcome all in all.”

It took a moment for Kurt to really get it that Ian was proud of him. Kurt could only stare at the wizard dumbfounded, incredulous even. This coming from the guy who consistently declared he’d be the ruin of Blaine?

Ian seemed to read his mind.

“I may have initially misjudged you.” He grinned as if he had told some joke and then with a sly expression he murmured. “But it would not be the first time.”

Kurt wasn’t going to try and make sense of that, no matter how much it tingled at his brain and how expectantly Ian looked at him. He knew it had something to do with Arthur and everything _else_ , but right now they had people in the here and now to worry about and Kurt just couldn’t handle dead kings and queens of the past. 

“What are you doing?” he asked, blatantly ignoring the bait, watching as the blue light from the wizard’s hands sank into the flesh of the one Blaine knew as Nick Duval.

“Fulfilling a promise.”

Ian let whatever conversation he’d meant to instigate drop with a small nod of acknowledgment. He moved his hands from Nick to Jeff and repeated the same process and Kurt watched with trepidation. He was about to ask why Ian could not just leave the dead to rest when suddenly brilliant light erupted from both bodies so bright he had to shield his eyes. There was a loud wooshing sound, like wind blowing through a tunnel. Kurt couldn’t see but he thought he heard voices over the roar of passing air.

There was a man’s voice, strange and yet familiar, and a woman’s who was just the same accompanying it.

Kurt tried to look but the light was too bright, stinging at his eyes. He saw no one, just Ian with his hair flying and clothes flapping in the wind and that unearthly bright light. Though he appeared to be alone the wizard was definitely having a conversation with someone, and Kurt swore he felt something brush against his cheek and the ghostly touch of someone’s breath in his ear.

A warm sensation began to bloom in his chest and to Kurt’s fascinated horror a glow began there, as if a supernova was about to come bursting out of him too. He shuddered, jerking away from the phantom touch and he heard what sounded like a woman’s longing sigh. 

“No.” He heard Ian say. “If you go he cannot come with you. It is not his time. You must choose now.”

For a moment more it was all light and wind, then, as if it had never been the light subsided, the wind slowed, and the noisy din faded away and Kurt was left holding himself tightly, staring at a beaming wizard and two young men who were both slowly opening their eyes and sitting up to stare at each other. 

“Jeff?” Nick croaked, reaching weekly for the blond teenager and Jeff’s lips spread into a tired smile.

“Nick…” Jeff’s chest seized in a dry heaving cough and it took him a moment to catch his breath and clear his throat. “What the hell were you thinking?! He could have killed you. I thought… I thought he did.”

No one watching spoke, but Kurt knew they were all thinking what he was. Sebastian _had_. Neither of them should be alive and yet here they were. What the hell had Ian done?

“This is your home. You’d die protecting it…” Nick tried to explain, fingers touching Jeff’s clenching and unclenching jaw and Jeff, who Kurt had never seen allow himself cry before, began to do just that.

“Sebastian and your clan… you had a home too Nick,” Jeff sniffled through falling tears and a wobbling chin.

“No, I didn’t. None of us did. That’s what being a stray means. Home wasn’t until I met you and I’m so sorry I’ve been such a dick about it…” Jeff barked a laugh at Nick’s words, a slow hopeful smile spreading through his tears as Nick leaned his forehead against his and breathed deeply. Both men clutched each other tightly as Nick murmured, “You’re home now. I choose you.”

Nick and Jeff embraced and somehow the touch of their bodies was more intimate even than a kiss and Kurt looked away, feeling that he was intruding on something private. When he turned he froze because standing at the edge of the yard was Blaine and the rest of the guard. 

Kurt hadn’t even realized he’d approached what with the supernatural experience he’d just had but as every last particle of his being lit with joy and washed with relief he understood exactly what Nick meant about finding home in someone else. A grin split Kurt’s face, the happiest he could remember feeling in what seemed like days of pain and strife. It was truly only hours, but so much could change in so short a time.

“Hey,” he said in one exhausted relief laden breath. 

What else did you say when you and the person you loved survived a battle with giant wolves and the police department and you watched a wizard bring two dead men back to life?

Blaine ignored Chandler rushing past him to get to Adam and strode toward Kurt. When Blaine stood in front of him, just raking him over with intense amber eyes, Kurt’s heart began to beat harder in his chest.

He licked his lips and tried to get his dry mouth to work. Blaine’s eyes asked questions but Kurt did not need to speak for answers. They knew each other down to every pump of blood their hearts made… except, maybe there _were_ some things that just needed to be said. Kurt needed to hear them anyway. Licking his lips he finally broke the silence between them.

“Did I do okay?”

His breath caught when Blaine grabbed him by the hips and pulled him into a desperate kiss. Kurt responded desperately in turn. Blaine tasted like sweat and blood, like fear and joy and relief all shaken together and stirred with that singular taste that was all Blaine. It was all _his_ and Kurt held him tightly, nearly bowing his mates back as he reveled in his heat and solidness and pressed their mouths together with fervor. They were both shaking against each other but neither of them said anything about it. Nothing about the signs of wear and tear on their bodies either or the blood and dirt they were smearing into each other’s skin.

Blaine was real in Kurt’s hands and Kurt was alive in his. That was enough to keep any horror at bay.

When they were finally forced to breathe Kurt let Blaine straighten up, and he felt him smile against the skin at his throat and press a kiss there. Blaine’s thoughts whispered to him, _“You did good Kurt. So good.”_

Kurt didn’t mind at all that it felt like Blaine’s pride in him could have sustained him for the rest of his days. It wasn’t like anyone else had to know. 

~*~*~*~

_Clang_  
Clang   
clang 

_Gwyn’s ears rang with each strike, the vibrations from the blows thrumming up his arm and rattling his teeth in his head. Lancelot was not the biggest foe he’d ever faced on the practice field. His knight master Duke Kembal was a burly man, almost weighing four stone what Gwyn weighed but what Lancelot lost in sheer size he made up for in speed and his blows were hardly what one could call light. Though Gwyn had enough time to deflect most of them easy enough they were precise and blunt, and it did not take him long to realize that as his muscles burned and his sword grew heavier beneath each blow that Lancelot’s aim was not to wound but to tire._

_He hated giving ground but he had to retreat. Arthur’s champion was too quick and if he stayed within reach he’d be stuck defending blows until his arm fell off._

_He stepped backward, deflecting a swipe of the knights longsword as his feet carried him and sending up a silent prayer of thanks when the knight did not press forward, allowing the small bit of retreat._

_“Oi lad, he’s the other way.” A voice from the sidelines jeered. As the other nights laughed Gwyn could only be glad that his helmet obscured the view of his cheeks, for they had flushed an angry red._

_“Do you need a moment?” Gwyn glanced up as Lancelot’s voice slid inside his mind, just in time to parry a blow he’d been too focused on the others to see coming. “I’ll give you time.”_

_“You play with me,” Gwyn accused in his thoughts. He was unsure if Lancelot heard them, still unused to the strange magic of the were-kind. He had his answer a moment later when the older man darted forward striking at his chest and Gwyn brought his arm up to strike Lancelot’s blade and force it down._

_“I’m teaching you. You’re a squire. I’m twice your size and have twice your experience. You can’t win this on the strength of your arm.”_

_As if to prove his point the knight used the momentum to bring the blade up and around in a circle, the side striking breast plate with a deafening clang and Gwyn stumbled backward. His lungs screamed as he fought to regain the breath that the blow had pushed from him, and it took every bit of strength he had to ignore the pain in his chest and bringing his sword back up to defend against another strike._

_“I know it,” he cursed in answer. “They know it too. Why do you think they elected you to be my challenger?”_

_“Forget about them Gwyn. This is not their battle. It is yours.”_

_“Well how do you propose I win it since you’re so fond of handing out advice?”_

_“Eyes on me. Focus. You’ve a good sword hand and even better, a sharp mind, but if you believe it is impossible to outwit me then it will be.”_

_“You’re going to let me win?” There was anger in the question, and for a moment Lancelot did not answer him, but Gwyn supposed the clanging of their swords-Lancelot parrying a blow that by right they both knew he could have deflected before it even began were he fighting Gwyn like an enemy- was answer enough._

_“No,” Lanceot finally answered, bringing his sword down so hard that no amount of straining on Gwyn’s part could keep his point up. “But I’m not going to stop you becoming a knight either.”_

_“Why? It was why you were chosen.”_

_“Why? Because it is right. Is that not reason enough?”_

_Face flushing with exertion Gwyn swung his shield around, striking at the armored Knights side. There wasn’t time for Lancelot to deflect the move and he was forced to try and lessen the blow before it hit, stepping away and freeing Gwyn’s sword._

_“And do you always do right, Lancelot Dulac?”_

_“As much as any man is able.”_

_Lancelot charged at him, striking low and straight and Gwyn had no choice but to lower his shield, opening himself up to a counter strike above and almost as soon as he’d thought it Lancelot’s sword came slashing down to strike his shoulder and Gwyn staggered._

_The blow had made his whole arm numb. It had been a foolish error on his part, one that could have lost him the match. Had it been his sword arm that was struck he likely would have dropped it. It wasn’t just luck he knew. Both arms had been vulnerable and yet Lancelot had not taken the clear advantage. Knowing better now, Gwyn was determined not to offer it again. Perhaps Lancelot honestly did not resent him as the other knights did, and would not like to see him humiliated. Perhaps he really did only wish to help him grow._

_“I daresay, you do more right than most men. You and Arthur… you have that in common.”_

_“My mother always told me it was the burden of lords to do right by those who could not do for themselves. I know it was the same with Arthur’s.”_

_“My mother always said much the same.”_

_“You took it to heart.”_

_“My lord?”_

_“What you did for your sister. I know Ian says it was foolish and perhaps it was… Still, you should be proud.”_

_Beneath the heated mettle of his helmet Gwyn flushed._

_It was strange but the longer they fought, the longer their thoughts slipped back and forth between their minds like gentle tide, the easier the match seemed to become. It was not that Lancelot got any slower, or his blows any weaker. It was as if they had sparred this way a million times before. Gwyn found himself anticipating each strike, recognizing certain shifts and ripples of motion in Lancelot’s form with ease and familiarity._

_The better Gwyn countered him the better Lancelot seemed to get, and so Gwyn rose to match him. He pulled things from within himself that he had not thought capable, until they were moving with such speed and dexterity that the boy’s heart pounded with exhilaration and a wide grin split his face._

_Watching them the King grinned, turning to Ian with a smug expression, for he would have his way and Gwyn would become a knight of the circle, albeit an unspoken one. Ian was less enthused. Undoubtedly the young prince from Gwent was a fine swordsman in the making but there was so much that Arthur and the rest of his men failed to see._

_“They’re splendid together, aren’t they?” Arthur breathed in awe and Ian’s brow deepened in a frown._

_The match between Arthur’s champion and his bride had flowered into an exciting spectacle, but it was only Ian who noticed that the battle was no longer so much a battle, but a dance._

_“Aye” was all he answered._

~*~*~

Evacuating Annehurst and getting the pack settled within the forest was nearly an all-night ordeal. The sky was three shades lighter when Blaine finally signaled to Kurt that it was time to return to the house. He had not expected the heaviness in his chest that he felt watching the men and women of the pack, abandon their homes and pack up their families to migrate deep into the forest. Some took with them what little they could, but laundry got left on lines and material things that Kurt once would have thought valuable left out in the open. 

A very young cub cried the whole walk to the wood because she’d had to leave her stuffed animals behind. Kurt had heard an old woman with graying hair commiserate with her daughter that it had been a mistake for them to get so soft. She even dared mutter that Alpha Julian would never have let things get this way. Kurt glared in her direction as he daughter shushed her, casting an apologetic glance his way. 

He forgave it. No one said it out loud but they all feared it. Annehurst was government land. It may not be safe to go back for a very long time. 

Going on expedition had turned out to be a pretty good idea all around. Kurt was prepared for how lycan’s lived in the forest. He helped Blaine organize the families and delegate sections of the forest. It was time consuming on account of territory issues due to minor feuds, family sizes, and needing to strategically position everyone in case of attack. His head was spinning with all of the details but he did his part helping dig dens, and iron out the numerous issues that popped up. 

By the time Blaine was ready to leave he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t drop dead on his feet and yet he hesitated. Chandler’s parents had insisted on being one of the last designated a spot and Kurt couldn’t help but think there was just something wrong about leaving Chandler’s heavily pregnant mother in a rock cave not even big enough to stand in. There was so much wrong with all of this he thought tiredly, swaying unconsciously until Blaine walked over and gently took his hand in his.

“Come on, you need rest. We’ll be back in the morning, Kurt.” 

Kurt could tell that Blaine was just trying to be reassuring. His concern was a warm glow right in the middle of Kurt’s gut. He fought the urge to lean back against him, wary of the eyes watching them. He’d somehow managed to convince Lina’s neighbors that he was capable, he wasn’t about to ruin that.

“She’s pregnant Blaine,” Kurt whispered as if Blaine didn’t know, gesturing to the painful sight of the admittedly hardy looking blond woman crawling into an opening along the rocky incline. Something twisted in his gut when Blaine’s eyes flicked down to his stomach and back up again in a lightning quick movement that they both staunchly ignored.

“Pregnant or not lycan women are still a bit stronger than human women Kurt,” Blaine pointed out. “With the students at the house space is scarce until Quinn gives the all clear at the school. Until then I’m sure Minny would rather be with her mate than anywhere else and I trust him to take care of her.”

Kurt opened his mouth to reply but at that moment Chandler’s mother stuck her head out of the mouth of the cave and frowned at Kurt and Blaine still standing there. She gestured impatiently for them to move as Chandler came up carrying the one suitcase she’d managed to pack. So far along in her pregnancy, Minny didn’t have the choice to change her shape anymore and needed clothes for warmth among other things.

“Minny can take care of herself thank you, Alpha, and I’m the one that takes care of Randy. That man would combust without me.” The omega female filled them in, smiling smugly when Chandler’s father Randy, carrying a couple of blanket wrapped bundles, blushed a furious shade of red. She waggled her eyebrows for emphasis and stared openly at his privates. “I’ve got things well in hand here Alpha.”

Chandler groaned and wrinkled his nose.

“Gross mom, I’m standing right here.”

“I see you. I also see you fell and Adam broke your fall.”

“Mom!” 

“Minny,” Randy warned gently.

“Oh alright, go away both of you if you aren’t going to let me have any fun.”

Kurt grinned at the exchange, Minny’s amiable attitude easing the tension still coiled so tightly within him. He did not know what singular thing was causing the imbalance he felt, the anxiousness and the sense of looming _wrongness_ , but Blaine’s hand in his helped and seeing evidence of the easy and close bonds between his friend and his parents somehow did too.

Chandler said his goodbyes and then they turned to go but they had barely moved before Minny huffed and waved dramatically for their attention. 

“Kurt, you can’t leave till we’ve properly met. I’m going to have to demand a hug from you.”

Kurt stared at her in confusion until Chandler rolled his eyes and muttered for him to just do it, or she’d never let him hear the end of it. Stumbling forward Kurt knelt at the mouth of the den and then crawled until he was near enough for Minny to pull him into a bone bracing hug.

“You were really something tonight.” She exclaimed when she finally let him go. “Of course I can’t thank you enough for saving his life, so I see why my son won’t shut up about you. Chandler truthfully doesn’t shut up about much but especially not about you. Here hon I’m going to give you a little kiss just for saving me from having Adam’s virtues extolled for the millionth time.” She smooched him nosily on the cheek as Chandler sputtered indignantly.

“I don’t talk about him that much!” Minny didn’t even look at him as she replied.

“Yes you do. Now Kurt,” she whispered like they were conspirators. “I should tell you to go back and get some rest and not worry about any of this, but we’re all going to have trouble sleeping tonight anyway so I want your promise you won’t waste what’s left of it worrying and instead, you let that mate of yours take good care of you. Okay?”

“I’m fine. The shift fixed everything,” Kurt assured her and Minny shook her head a glint of mischief in her eyes as she slid her gaze past him and to Blaine’s lower body visible just outside the cave. 

“I’m not talking about physical wounds Hon. He’s your alpha, and sub to sub you’re rattling like a loose bolt right now. Let him help you. It’s one thing they’re good for, alpha’s, and anyway they cub will need it as much as you do.”

Kurt swallowed thickly. He wanted to ask what she meant by cub but he already knew. He wanted to ask how she could know what he and Blaine weren’t even ready to acknowledge might be a possibility let alone ready to announce to the whole pack but he was afraid to. Minny seemed to read his mind anyway.

“Carrying gives you some pretty keen senses. You get used to the way it smells day in and day out, makes it easier to smell it on others.”

Kurt’s heart plummeted into his stomach and he went absolutely still. 

For a moment there was only the panic, stinging and rattling at his insides as roaring rushed up in his ears. Then he felt Blaine’s fingers brush his back. Just that, just a stroke, a reminder of where he was and that he was never alone, not even in this, and Kurt expelled a shuddering breath and breathed again. Minny watched him with worry, the merriment fading from her face as she smoothed the sweat dank hair from his eyes.

“That’s right” she murmured mostly to herself. “Human men don’t carry. Oh Honey, this must be something else.”

Kurt wanted to scoff at the understatement of that but his predicament wasn’t Minny’s fault, the fact that he was scared shitless and it didn’t look like the fates were going to show him any mercy wasn’t hers either. He was two seconds to falling apart and the only things stopping him were Blaine’s hands on his back and this woman’s kind touch.

“Something else entirely.” He tried to smile but it wobbled and then fell apart. Minny just cooed softy, cradling his face in that gentle way they must teach mothers before they allow them to leave the hospital.

“Well, Mr. Hummel,” she began after a long quiet moment. “From what I’ve seen of you tonight… So are you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only three chapters left! I want to thank you guys so much for your continued patience and for those who have stuck with this story for so long. You truly are what keeps me going. Whenever I think about just letting it go I go back and I read some of your replies and the discussions and it reminds me why I love sharing it. So we've reached the arch of the big finale. A bunch of civilians are dead, Sebastian's pack is gone, he and Nick are in Blaine's custody, James and the vampire's are coming, Rachel has found Finn and Carol but where on earth are Burt and Puck and what does James plan to do with them anyway? Oh yeah Kurt's probably carrying but shhh he doesn't really want to talk about that. This can't end well can it? We'll find out.


	32. Chapter 30: A Good Son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gleecap:A long time ago Blaine's dad made friends with this crazy wizard named Dagan who tried to like make Blaine's dad invincible so he could use King Arthur's crown and like rule the world or whatever. He killed everybody so Blaine had to kill him and Blaine gets pretty upset when you try to talk about it (ouch). Oh yeah and he killed his brother Cooper too because he like ate their little sisters which was really not cool. Santana betrayed her Pack and ran away with a vampire girl because she thinks Brittany's coven is only pretending to be upset about Brittany getting hurt so that Blaine will have to invite them over and they can wreck all his shit. There was this other crazy guy running around in Columbus killing people, only he's not a vampire at all he's like a VampWolf and he's like Lina's dead mate, and Brittany's sire or something. Everybody's just really tired and probably about as confused as you are. Also Sebastian decided he was going to kill Lina and like half of Westerville and Kurt was like "Not in my house son!" and it was pretty bad ass, and that's about where you finished on Mângâiere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Individual Chapter Warnings: Finn's involved with this chapter. He's been gravely injured and Carole is with him so the scene may be hard to get through. I obviously can't spoil how it ends here but if you'd like details please message me. I'll be checking here and on tumblr periodically. Also the definition and details of subspace depicted here are FICTIONAL, purposefully designed for the fictional species in this story so please please please do not use this as a guide for dealing with subspace. There are wonderful resources for that that don't involved wizards and vampires.
> 
> ~*~*~*~*
> 
> Helpful glossary of terms:
> 
> Subspace: a largely unstudied metaphysical plane where the consciousness of a submissive lycan may be carried, as a result of trauma or an extreme rush of endorphins. It is evident that even while being “removed” they are highly susceptible to outside stimulation and may choose to remain in subspace until they feel safe enough to return.
> 
> Chatelaine: (French ). The mistress (or caretaker) of a large, fashionable household in the middle ages. Later commonly called a housekeeper.
> 
> Mały Miś: (polish) Little teddy bear.
> 
> Mac Murchadha (Irish). Surname, later anglicized to Mcmorrow. Arthur’s bloodline through his mother. Blaine’s great (times a few) grandfather Andrew Mcmorrow changed the name to Anderson upon his entry to the US to avoid recognition.

Burt didn’t think the men who had abducted him and Puck were actually cops (at least he didn’t think they were operating within the law) but after he and Puck had been cuffed, more of the airport security detail had arrived and they had seemed to recognize the two men. They also hadn’t seemed to have any real idea what was going on either and had seemed very confused by Pucks weak flailing and screaming about vampires. Burt was sure that people under arrest shouted all sorts of things so he’d tried his best to keep a level head and explain to them and any of the gawkers who might care enough to help that the first two officers were abducting them.

Airport security had been very uneasy about the situation. They were upset with the two officers for breaking protocol of some sort and had tried to hold them all for questioning. There had been a whole lot of radios beeping and uniformed men jostling them about after that. They’d spent a good amount of time puffing up and threatening each other until a command from higher up had come. The other officers were told to let them and their captives go on their way. Apparently their business was classified. The head of security hadn’t looked pleased but his hands had been tied.

Burt and Puck had been marched out the back and shoved in the back of a waiting police van. The brunette officer had hit him across the face with the back of his fists when he’d gotten tired of his struggles and momentarily stunned Burt. Just long enough to get a sack over his head and tie his wrists together. The guy had turned to Puck to do the same but Burt figured by then whatever juice had been in that coffee the girl had given them had taken full effect because Puck barely moved as the guy jerked him around tying him up and let his head fall back when he was finished with a painful sounding thud.

That had been hours ago. 

They’d been in perpetual darkness since then. Puck’s ragged breathing was the only soundtrack over the rattle and roar of the vehicle carrying them to the unknown. It gave Burt a lot of time to think, too much time if you asked him. He hadn’t thought that much about death in a long time. Maybe he should have what with his heart condition… but the thing about that was, once you’d had death touch you realized how important focusing on the living part of life really was. He hadn’t wanted to worry about counting calories and regulating cholesterol levels, at least not so much that he didn’t feel like he was really living anymore.

He’d wanted to love his wife, love their kids, and be there for their unique accomplishments. Help Finn get his business off the ground, help Kurt find his steam again, have old people sex with Carole… He’d wanted all of it and it had seemed like the right thing to focus on at the time. 

Now all of that was likely gone. Now there was nothing to think about but death. There was the desperate hope that Finn and Carole had made it to the safe house, that Kurt would not play into the hands of these men and remain safe and that whatever fate Burt was being carried to he would suffer it alone. And of course there was a small sick part of him, that he refused to acknowledge, that hoped the opposite. A tiny boy inside who didn’t want to die alone in the hands of monsters, who would have done anything to see a familiar face and have someone to hold onto at the end.

It left a bitter taste in the back of his throat but Burt supposed he was allowed that bit of humanity.

The van went over a bump and jolted. On the floor beside him Puck groaned, stirring for the first time in an hour or two. Burt couldn’t see him what with the sack over his head but he turned his head in his general direction.

“You alright Puckerman?”

“If drugged as a junkie constitutes as alright,” came the muffled reply and despite the fact that Puck being lucid again didn’t really change much Burt felt relieved. It was funny. He hadn’t trusted Puck at the start of this but he figured if he was going to start to trust him at any point it was now or never.

“How’s your... thing. Can you…?”

“Shift?” Puck groused and Burt heard him attempt to sit up, cursing under his breath. “No can do Mr. H. I can’t even sit up.”

Burt tried not to feel a fresh wave of despair at the words but it was harder than he ever thought imaginable. Puck tried to sit up again but he must have failed because a moment later Burt heard a thud and a growl of frustration and then Puck seemed to explode.

“This is so fucked up! I promised I’d get you guys out and I can’t! I can’t! I can’t… I can’t.”

The younger man whimpered and it wasn’t a strictly human sound. It should have reminded Burt that Puck was something animal, something dangerous and different, but all it did was remind him that Puck was young. Too young to die far from home and tortured, or whatever else this crazed vampire planned on doing with them. Burt couldn’t help a shudder, or the gasp he had to take for breath as fear squeezed tightly at his chest, but he could help Puck. He might never get the chance to see his boys again or Carole but there was still this. He could do this.

“Hey, come on, stop that.”

Puck’s whimpers silenced at Burt’s gruff but quiet command.

“Nobody is blaming you for this Puck. You did your best. You don’t know how much it means, knowing you loved my family enough to try. That’s all you could do was try.”

He heard shifting and suspected that Puck was inching closer to the sound of his voice.

“I don’t want to go out like this,” the young man rasped and Burt swallowed back the emotion that threatened to tighten his throat and prevent any sound from escaping. He hadn’t wanted to die like this either.

“Let’s keep our heads up and find a way out of this alright, Puckerman? I need you to have my back.”

It took everything he had to exude confidence when he saw no way out for either of them. He was just a man and Puck beneath all that werewolf mumbo jumbo was just a scared kid and they were up against creatures the likes of which Burt couldn’t even begin to comprehend the power of. The only hope he could imagine was Kurt, who was a werewolf himself now if Puck was telling the truth, who might be able to stage some sort of rescue.

But Burt knew that was entirely the reason they’d come after Kurt’s family in the first place. They were bait, so that these killers could get their hands on his son and do god only knew what to him. Burt wished with everything that he had that Kurt would forget about them and stay far away; but the trouble with that hope was that he already knew it was futile.

He knew his son.

Kurt would move hell and high water to get to him which meant that Burt’s hopes lay with this Anderson guy, who might be a bastard for biting his kid in the first place but might earn himself Burt’s eternal gratitude if he kept Kurt far from whoever had taken him and wherever he and Puck were headed.

 _“For me….”_ Burt had never been keen on church, but he’d sure done a lot of praying since this mess started. Desperation could do that to a person, make them call out to the cosmos just in case of gods or other powers that might be able to intervene. He’d start going to church and never miss a Sunday if he thought it would mean this one prayer was answered.

_“Please. Just keep him safe.”_

~*~*~

_Dayton_

Victoria Walsh sucked on the end of an unlit cigarette and paced. She was on the front porch of her Uncle Ezra’s house staring out at the wooded drive and listening to the crickets make a racket. She wasn’t normally the paranoid sort but this place was giving her the creeps. She couldn’t shake the feeling that anything could be out there, watching her, or that Jesse’s creepy vampire could spring up at any moment from out of the dark.

But they’d needed a place to stash the van and hide out until Jesse could pick them up. Which meant she’d had to do away with poor Uncle Ezra because he was as red blooded as they came, had never approved of his sister marrying a mage and wasn’t about to let his niece keep two strangers hostage in his home.

“Shouldn’t have been such an asshole,” she muttered to the night sky as she dialed Jesse’s number for the third time. “And I swear to god, Jesse, if you don’t pick up this goddamn phone I’m out. Figure your own shit out. This has gotten--”

“What do you want?” Jesse’s voice caught her mid stride and Victoria bristled, turning sharply on her heel and pacing in the other direction.

“What do I want?” she all but screeched in indignation. “Why the fuck haven’t you answered your phone?! Do you have any idea what is going on down here?”

“I’ve been a bit busy Victoria. This is very delicate magic. The full moon is in two days. We could all go up in smoke if this isn’t timed just right.”

Jesse’s reply was tinny in her ear but not loud enough to drown out the droning of the crickets. The throbbing behind her eyes seemed to be pulsing in time to their racket. With an agitated motion of her hand she cast a silencing spell, watching as a thin wall of blue light spread outward and surrounded the porch in beautiful quiet.

“Well I got news for you St. James. It isn’t going to go at all. I’m stuck in Dayton.”

“What?”

“You heard me. The van had a leak. Now the cops are looking for us because one of those stupid fucking thralls shot the place up. They’re everywhere St. James, I sent the thrall out to see about getting another car and they snatched him up like fly paper. There’s no way we’re getting to the mounds now.”

Had Victoria been paying better attention she would have felt the gaze of someone watching her from the shadows. Perhaps had her head not hurt as much as it did she would not have cast the surrounding area in a silencing spell and she might have heard some betraying rustle of grass or click of nail on stone as the wolf approached. As it was she heard and felt nothing before it was over.

One moment she was arguing with Jesse and the next a wolf had leapt onto the porch, eyes glowing a haunting gold as it braced to spring.

Victoria screamed and threw her arms up but there wasn’t enough time to cast a defensive spell.

~*~*~

_Westerville_

It was a tired and somber company that made its way through the forest back to Anderson house. Kurt was quiet where he walked beside Blaine but Blaine felt the tension radiating out from him. Kurt was tightly compressed panic and fear, as well as a host of other emotions that all had his hectic energy rattling against Blaine’s senses like the tail end on a rattle snake. Outwardly he looked tired and subdued walking almost sightlessly along, as if he was barely aware of where his feet were taking him.

Blaine glanced at the others, taking quick stock of what would still need to be done before he could get his mate into a warm bed. Noelle and the other guardsmen would know how to sort themselves out. Chandler would no doubt be going to the infirmary to check on Adam who’d had shifting complications after being shot. Ordinary bullets wouldn’t take them down in a single shot but they were still tricky wounds to heal if the bullet got lodged and was not expelled during the shift. It would require Quinn’s attention and surgical removal which meant Chandler was likely to spend the night there. 

Santana would need a room to stay in if there was a room to be had he was thinking, but as they approached the fork between the way back town and onward to the house she stopped, her eyes boring into Blaine’s with an unspoken request for an audience. Blaine stopped alongside her though he eyed his mates dogged steps. He was momentarily torn between his gratitude for Santana’s help that night and his desire to whisk Kurt away someplace safe and set everything in their world to rights. Kurt needed rest, so he made the decision to direct the others to continue on to the house.

Kurt came out of his fog long enough to send Blaine a look that was one part reluctance and the other part resignation and Blaine gave him a reassuring smile, an unspoken promise that he would not linger long.

When Kurt and the others had continued on their way he turned back to Santana and finally gave her a proper thank you for her help that night.

“I’m in your debt. I would offer you hospitality but from the looks of it you have somewhere else to be.”

In truth now that they were not all in danger of dying Blaine wondered what had brought Santana to Westerville in the first place. He doubted it was just passing through. It was odd for a wolf to leave their pack unannounced and odder still to aid another pack Alpha. Even aiding one they were familiar with was risky politically because it could bring their loyalty to their own pack into question. Blaine had no doubt that lycans had just become the enemy of the city council of Westerville and once the news vans started streaming footage of bodies littering the streets they’d be a national enemy as well. Every Alpha with an ounce of self-preservation would be trying to distance themselves. Shuester would be livid that Santana had gotten herself involved in a mess of this proportion.

Santana to her credit didn’t waste any time getting to the point.

“I’ve got a place, but I need to come back in the morning. There’s a lot you need to know, you and Hummel.” Her eyes flicked to Kurt’s disappearing back and Blaine narrowed his eyes, instantly wary.

“What do you want with Kurt?” he asked, mindful of his volume. The woman rolled her dark eyes and glowered at him but thankfully kept her voice equally low.

“What do you think I want? Balaur’s coven will be here in two days and this forest will be crawling with Vampires out to put him down like a rabid dog.”

“They have no real case,” Blaine reminded her and Santana waved the words away with an irritated gesture before he’d even finished speaking them.

“They really don’t give a rat’s ass. They just want to kill him. They don’t care how it gets done.”

“I know that.” Blaine’s muscles tensed and he clenched his fists, pushing back the surge of aggression he had no present outlet for. He had to focus on what mattered. Taking care of the pack and taking care of Kurt. This was the best way to do both.

“And you’re _still_ going through with it?” Santana gaped. “You really think Lamb Chop stands a chance?”

“He held his own tonight.”

“It’s not the same fighting vampires and you know it.”

When he looked away from her she said nothing more and he was grateful for that. The tension between them was so thick it almost had physical shape until Santana finally sighed, stepping closer. Her voice was lower and softer when she spoke again, like this time she was the one afraid of being overheard.

“Blaine, there’s something big going on here. End of the line big. Can’t you feel that?”

He did. If he hadn’t seen it in the strange pieces falling into place he’d have seen it in Ian’s face when Lina had revealed that not all the Vryloka were dead. A wicked wind was blowing in and yet there was nothing to do but let the story play out as it would.

“It doesn’t change the fact that Guild law mandates the conclave,” he answered and he pressed on when Santana opened her mouth to say something likely combative. “Protecting him is the best I can do until Balaur shows his hand. You know there isn’t any place safer than here.”

Santana bit her lip. Her whole body was vibrating with frustration and it was disconcerting to see her without words for the first time in their acquaintance. Blaine laid a hand on her shoulder, offering a fortifying squeeze. But before he could say anything else she grasped his hand tightly and spoke on a rush of breath, her voice strained almost as if she were frightened of the words she was speaking.

“What if Westerville isn’t as safe as you think it is? What if it hasn’t been safe in years…” Blaine went rigid and he knew she had to see it, had to feel the fury her words invoked inside him but nobody ever said Santana wasn’t brave enough to say exactly what she thought when she thought it. She gave him a steely look and went on.

“I know you’re really busy playing King Janitor and cleaning up daddy’s mess but can we get real for a second? He fucked up big time. He started something evil here; right here Blaine, where it was supposed to be safe. Did you forget what he did?”

It was so hard to speak that at first Blaine could only push a single sound through his gritted teeth.

“No.” Once it was out he gained momentum, stepping into the taller woman’s space and keeping as tight a hold on his anger as he could, commanding her to stop with a wordless glare. Santana shrank back as danger flared across her senses. He felt it in the crackle and ripple of power in the air and could see it in the woman’s flinch as she felt his darker aura brush her skin. He hadn’t been this close to losing his cool in a long time. He knew this feeling, this feeling of hell opening up inside, burning and blackening everything it touched, of darkness numbing at everything good and bright until it swallowed you whole.

_‘Blaine?’_

It was only a thought. Only as simple as Kurt thinking about him, reaching for him across time and space and flooding Blaine’s mind with a hundred fractured images of his eyes, his smile, and the sway of his back as he danced about the kitchen rattling the food dish, just as simple as that but it kept the dark at bay.

Blaine blinked away the haze and kept his tone tightly controlled. He fervently hoped Santana would do the smart thing and let this subject drop.

“You have no idea what we lost destroying what my father created,” he reminded her. “What _I_ lost. I’ll never forget it. _Never_.”

How could he? How could anyone think he’d forget losing his family? His brothers, his sisters, his father, they’d all been gone in less than a year, one brutal blow after another.

“Are you sure you destroyed it all?” Santana asked quietly. There was something hollow in her voice, and by it Blaine knew she regretted having to say the things she was saying, having to remind him of his losses, but it gained strength as she crossed her arms, looking as if she were bracing for a blow. She wasn’t going to drop it.

“Evil like that doesn’t die easy, it leaves scars.”

He wanted to yell at her, bite and tear at whatever bits of her he could reach, but even if the wolf wanted to kill her, the man knew why she was doing this and maybe that was the wiser part of him whispering that he should heed her.

It was impossible for him to be familiar with every lycan in the world but Ian never stopped reminding him that it was part of his duty just the same. Blaine did his best to be familiar with every ancient family, every powerful bloodline, the strengths and weaknesses of every pack as well as their hierarchies. His library wasn’t full of lycan histories for nothing.

Santana, for all that she made a joke of her third eye, had been born in Guayama, a city in Puerto Rico also known as “the city of witches”. In Guayama magical blood was dense in the population and as a result of mixing with wizards there had been more than one lycan in her father’s family born with magical gifts over the generations.

Santana did not appear to have inherited any, but magic was a strange thing. It didn’t always show up with a bang.

“We destroyed it,” Blaine assured her, his throat tightening with grief until the words seemed to rip out of him. “We killed the dark mage, my father, and the children they experimented on. We killed them all.”

“Maybe that didn’t do the trick. Haven’t you ever wondered why I’ve never moved here?”

When Blaine only stared at her the woman closed her eyes like she was fighting for patience, but it wasn’t that. What Blaine sensed from her was more like fear. The closer he got the more it felt like outright terror.

“You think I really wanted to spend the rest of my life answering to Shuester and working at some crap bar?”

“I assumed you stayed for your grandmother.”

Blaine heard an internal wail of pain, a quick rush of hot throbbing energy before Santana enclosed herself behind thick mental walls and suddenly all he got from her was silence. She had unusually strong defenses, but then again it was not wholly unexpected given her bloodline. Her reply was wooden.

“Abuela hates Columbus, but she still refuses to move here. We came here once when I was seven to see the school. I don’t remember it. I never liked to talk about it either… She says I refused to even get out of the car, that I screamed and cried and told her that _he_ was looking at me.”

She didn’t need to elaborate, which was good because Blaine could see what it was costing her to admit even that much. Santana never had wanted to draw real attention to herself (the kind that mattered). She didn’t want to stick out as something _other_ because the truth of being different was that you were always a target and they were targets enough as it was.

Blaine understood that, he had been born different too after all. Santana was only a year older than him which meant he would have been six at the time of her visit. So much had been happening already, even then. Adam’s sister Kala had gone missing the year before, Christian had been executed that year, there had been a wave of miscarriages that struck the pack like a curse and as a result Blaine’s father had become obsessed with having more children, even if he’d had to break his mate to do it.

It was hard not to go back there in his mind, not to let the darkness wrap him up and pull him down. Blaine had only been a cub, only able to watch helplessly leaning on Connor for comfort as his waking hours became an endless nightmare. Cooper’s advice, when he had been around to give it, had been to trust their father and not act like such a spineless puppy. 

Through it all Dagan had been there. The mage had stood at their father’s side whispering in his ear and holding them all in a grip of fear. Blaine had no doubt who the _he_ was that Santana had felt looking at her. In those years it had seemed that Dagan was everywhere. Every breath they took they breathed in nothing but misery and death, and every step they took was shadowed.

So when Blaine asked, “Is he watching you now?” Santana did not pretend to misunderstand. She didn’t answer immediately either. She took a deep breath and looked away, her brow furrowing as she concentrated on something she did not bother to let him in on. Blaine wondered mildly if she could. When she finally spoke again she turned back to him, blinking rapidly and speaking low and rushed, as eager as Blaine to have the conversation over with.

“He’s not here, but _something_ is. Something dark has been here and it’s coming back Blaine. You need to talk to Brittany.”

“Brittany?” He asked, recognizing the name and unsure where this was headed.

“The vampire woman your boy toy chewed up last month?” Santana snapped and Blaine could only wonder at the amount of irritation in her tone. “They want her dead. At first I thought it was just so she wouldn’t testify at the conclave but that’s too much effort for a case everyone knows is already lost. So she must know something they don’t want going public, something she doesn’t even know she knows. Let me bring her here and—”

“Santana—”

“Blaine! If you knew her you’d understand.” The desperation was what quieted him. He’d never seen Santana act like this and he wasn’t sure whether or not he trusted her like this either. Clearly there was more to what was going on between her and this vampire woman than she let on. Santana seemed to sense the direction of his thoughts and she tensed even further.

“She’s not just some leech okay, she’s… she’s special” the woman tried to explain. “She’s been through hell and it started right here in Westerville. Around the same time your dad started playing Dr. Frankenstein. Do you honestly think that’s a coincidence?! Because I don’t.”

Blaine didn’t want to listen, didn’t want to invite a strange vampire female into his forest whose presence would undoubtedly upset his mate and bring back bad memories; but Santana was right. He didn’t believe in coincidences like that. He couldn’t afford to. So in the end he agreed.

~*~*~

_Dayton_

The witch stared up at her with dead eyes frozen in fear. The wolf slowly shifted, abandoning her powerful wolf body for the weaker but far less freighting body of a human female.

When Rachel entered the house she was met with stillness but her ears were too good for it to be completely silent. She could hear a woman’s voice crying softly from within and it was not a welcome sound. She didn’t know anyone with a perfect life but she’d never felt anything close to what the crying woman was feeling. Her pain was so keen Rachel swore she could feel it in the floorboards beneath her feet. They were bare so they made no noise as she slipped silently towards the back of the house, doing her best not to alert anyone of her presence, which was easier said than done with her whole body numb and feeling like it was made of clubs.

Besides being slightly blue in tint wizard blood had magical properties of its own. Touching it not only made it feel like she was about to freeze to death it dampened her body’s natural abilities, including the ability to heal itself. Covered in it she had almost not made it through her shift and even so she was covered in bruises and blood from head to toe.

She was extra careful as she crept through the house. The fact that nobody had come rushing to the woman’s aid when she’d attacked said a lot but a girl could never be too careful.

The crying was coming from the living room where Rachel could see an open and unguarded doorway. Considering however that her body was still stinging from the cold bite of wizard blood that didn’t mean it wasn’t being guarded somehow. There had to be a reason Kurt’s step mother and brother hadn’t even tried to escape.

But if there had been any magic blocking the door before the witch’s demise it was gone now, because when Rachel was finally close enough to step through it she didn’t feel so much as a spark. It didn’t take long to see what was wrong. The woman, who fit the picture of Carole that Puck had given her, was holding a man who fit Finn’s description. He was covered in blood.

Death had a smell. There wasn’t much hunting to be done in Columbus but Rachel was wolf and she knew the smell of death when it flowered like a second instinct. She could smell the bad blood flowing in Finn’s veins and hear the weak pumping of his heart.

Rachel’s nose twitched and she took a shuddering breath. At the sound Carole looked up at her through her tears and if Rachel had expected her to scream at the sight of a naked woman covered in blood she was disappointed. Carole was either much quicker than most humans or maybe just plain desperate because she didn’t scream.

She pleaded.

“Please… please, help us.”

“I’m Rachel,” Rachel began, kneeling down to look the distraught woman in the eye. Finn’s body was trembling in his mother’s hold, covered in slick sweat and Rachel didn’t need to see the glassy unfocused look of his eyes to know that he was high with fever. “I was supposed to meet you this morning. When I discovered you missing I tracked you here. I’m sorry I was too late for him, but we can’t stay here.”

Looking into the other woman’s desperate gaze she’d never been sorrier in her life. Finn wasn’t going to make it to any doctor.

“No. No!” Carole seemed to guess what came next. “I won’t leave him here. I won’t!”

“The man who wanted you taken will send others. You have to come with me.”

“This is my son!” Carole barked at her, clutching Finn’s torn and bloodied shirt in her white knuckled grip as if she was afraid Rachel would snatch him away. And it hurt like a hot poker to the gut that it wasn’t showing up in blood that made this woman look at her like she might be a monster, but the suggestion that she leave her child to die and focus on saving her own life.

“He’s my baby. Please. Don’t ask me to leave him. Help him.”

Rachel growled in frustration, wanting to shout at the other woman and cry at the same time but doing neither. She did not truly fault Carole for her stubbornness. Her loyalty to her cub was admirable, and only as strong as a mother’s should be.

But there was no help for Finn. 

Unless… It was crazy, one hundred percent certifiable, but it was the only chance the man had and Rachel couldn’t break her promise to Noah, she just couldn’t.

“There’s a chance he can be saved…” Carole’s head shot up and painful hope was brightening her face even before Rachel finished speaking. “But it’s risky” she warned.

“I don’t care,” Carole immediately replied. “What do I have to do?”

“You have to let him go.” Carole looked horrified. Rachel nodded solemnly, and explained with all the gravitas she could muster, “If he’s converted the bite will infuse him with lycan DNA. Our cells are self-correcting so it will repair his wounds. If he hasn’t already lost too much blood and the pain doesn’t make his heart stop he’ll live… but he won’t be yours anymore Carole. He won’t be human. So consider this carefully. He might not welcome our life.”

Rachel watched Carole’s face as her words sank in, as her eyes welled up with fresh tears- new and vivid pain- as she lowered her cheek to his brow and rocked.

“You’re right,” she rasped through tears after a painful pause. “He might not. He might hate the thought of being one of you. He’s always been scared of you.”

Rachel nodded expectantly and watched one of Carole’s shaking hands stroke the unconscious male’s brow. The terrible tenderness in the gesture was almost too much to look at.

“But…” Carole looked back up at Rachel then, a fierce determination burning behind her breathy voice and Rachel blinked at her, surprised by the turn.

“But what? He would want to die human, you admitted it yourself. He’ll resent this” she insisted.

“I don’t care.” Carole was adamant. “He can resent me till the day I die. I would suffer that, I swear, so long as I knew that he was alive somewhere; that I didn’t have to wake up each morning without hope. He’s what I’ve woken up every morning thinking about for twenty seven years. What I’ve loved since the first day I saw him on that scan, what I’ve given so much of my life for, and I don’t want it back! I don’t want empty years that I have to fill with work, or me time, or whatever stupid thing is supposed to make me forget that my child is dead and I don’t know how to stop being his mother. Please. Just please… ” 

Rachel didn’t speak. There weren’t words for what she felt in the face of the other woman’s pain, just a choice to be made. Rachel eyed him, wondering at his ordinary appearance and hoping against hope that what she was about to do wouldn’t get them all killed.

When she stood, Carole caught her hand, a panicked expression on her face and pleaded to know where she was going.

“He’s not ly-kindred which means he can’t be converted. Only a pack Alpha can make a wolf ly-kindred which means we need a pack Alpha.”

“The man that Kurt is with… won’t he…?”

Rachel shook her head in response to Carole’s plea.

“Blaine is too far away.” Carole looked crushed. “But don’t give up. There is a call we have, called the _tovaras_ , all wolves recognize it even if some choose not to honor it. Any who hear it are to carry it to their Alpha and he is to answer the call.”

“That’s good right?” Carole asked hopefully.

“It is left over from an age of chivalry and you know what they say about that. I’ve intruded on their land and brought death and danger. I’m sure they’d as soon as kill me as help me and they won’t be too keen to follow a bunch of old rules nobody cares about anymore.”

Rachel sniffed delicately, thinking of Alpha Shuester and added, “Some people cannot be relied on to preserve what is good and work to the benefit of all rather than the few.”

Carole bit her lip, her worry clouding her face and Rachel reached to give her arm a comforting pat. The motion felt awkward and useless and she quickly abandoned it. Nothing would comfort Carole now except the knowledge that Finn would live. There was only one way to achieve that.  
~*~  
Hokar Corazon was closing the doors of Midnight Alley to the public when he heard it. A distant chorus of howls carried from one throat to the next, a mournful and distinctly urgent sound that every wolf no matter their size or subspecies would recognize. 

His Beta, Marius Bailey, looked up from the bar where he was currently serving up drinks to a couple of guardsmen who had wandered in at the end of their shift. The bowling alley was the largest source of pack income during business hours and by night it served equally well as a meeting place for Dayton's lycan population. At the sound the beta wolf and the two alphas he'd been conversing with fell silent and Marius arched a questioning brow at Hok.

Hok had kept an eye on the progress of the unidentified wolf in their territory for the greater part of the day. Dealing with wanderers was almost a daily occurrence since he'd become Alpha of the Dayton pack. They were a small community, their location seeing more travelers passing through than it ever saw of any real trouble. His niece Sunshine had been following the stranger that had appeared that morning and sending back regular reports on their activities. 

Other Alphas might have been more openly aggressive with a stranger who tarried too long in their territory, but Hok wasn't a fan of trouble and he considered it his primary duty as the Alpha to keep the wolves of Dayton out of it.

The _tovaras_ meant many things to wolf kind. To some it was a reminder of the days when the great families had ran together, sharing brood and hunt under a single banner, when packs had honored each other as brothers and their hearts had beat for one Alpha. The old traditions had faded away long ago but even today most wolves would pause before dishonoring the tovaras howl. 

Hokar paused perhaps longer than most. To him _tovaras_ meant nothing but trouble. 

~*~*~*~

_Westerville_

The problem with waiting was that there was entirely too much time to think. Kurt had made it back to the house with the others and Allie had been there to greet them at the door. There had been some upheaval at the house while they were away, something to do with a fire, but Kurt had barely registered the words she’d been speaking. No one had been hurt, that was the important thing and he was sure he and Blaine could handle the rest later, but Kurt really didn’t think he could handle one more thing tonight or he’d lose it.

But once he was back at the house with nothing to do but wait every ache and pain that adrenaline had held back came forward demanding now to be noticed. He lay on the bed in Blaine’s room and tried to find rest for his exhausted body but the effort was almost over before it began because as soon as he closed his eyes his head was full of nightmare visions of blood, death, and pain and he quickly opened them again.

He kept seeing bodies. The bodies of the police men, of the MacTere wolves, of pack members he barely knew the names of… he saw Jeff dying over and over again, he saw people like Chandler, Lina, and Blaine whom he knew were alive and well dying gruesome deaths. He heard them crying out for help. He saw his family, whom he’d chosen to abandon when they were threatened and only at risk in the first place because of _him_ , staring up at him with cold accusing eyes from mangled and bloodied corpses and he shuddered. He pressed a hand to his mouth to contain the scream he felt building from the depths of his soul but could not seem to push past the block in his throat.

One thing was clear, he could not sleep. He was terrified to even attempt it again. He was shaking when he sat up, clenching the sheets beneath his palms with stiff uncooperative fingers as he bit back the swell of emotion. Kurt focused everything he had on staying together. He really wanted Blaine but he’d already messed up so much already: countless dead bodies, countless accusing eyes, countless blame. 

He’d put everyone and everything he’d ever loved in danger and abandoned half of them to their fate, so the least he could do was not bother Blaine when he was busy with far more important things than coddling an ill chosen mate: a scared weak human male who fell apart the first hard decision he was asked to make and couldn’t sleep after a battle because of something as stupid as an over active imagination. 

_‘Go to sleep!’_ , he ordered himself fiercely within his head. _‘No one is looking at you.’_.

When he felt Blaine’s invisible touch drawing nearer, the inexplicable touch of focus shifting towards him, Kurt willed himself to be quiet and still within his mind so that Blaine wouldn’t further sense his distress and come running back to him like a frightened mother checking on an infant. He knew he was better than this. _Had_ to be better than this, simply had to be. 

Unconsciously he reached for Lina, whether it was for advice or because he somehow just knew he’d find what he found, he reached and when he did he was met with an uncanny stillness. It was an _‘I’m fine’_ too intense to be genuine and he recognized it instantly for what it was because he himself had only just done it a moment before.

 _“I’m on my way, just wait for me okay, Honey?”_ Kurt heard Blaine say as he rose from the bed, he did, and he had the thought that maybe Blaine had believed his false projection of calm about as much as he’d believed Lina’s. 

_‘Honey is new_ ’, Kurt thought as he dragged himself to the room he and Lina had (not) shared the night before. _‘Guess it comes from being married… only we’re not. We’re mated. Which is like the same only it’s really really not. It’s stupid semantics, married versus mated, I know that… I just really wanted to get married someday.”_

He wouldn’t. Blaine would hardly see the point in an expensive human tradition that would have no effect on their lives together, especially if it was granted by a government he saw as an enemy, and it was silly to dwell on something so trivial at a time like this. Where was his mind going?

Someone had replaced the door he noted when he reached the room but he wasn’t able to bring himself to go inside right away. He still wanted Blaine. Blaine wasn’t inside that room but Lina would be, with Benito, hopefully sleeping after the nights harrowing events but he doubted it. He didn’t trust that stillness. Not after the things she’d been through, the horrible twisted things that Sebastian had said and done.

The memory of his words, and how small Lina had looked fighting for her life below him, was what gave Kurt the strength to finally open the door.

As he’d suspected Lina wasn’t sleeping. She was curled up in the middle of the bed sobbing quietly with Benito still sleeping soundly at the foot. She looked up at him with tear stained cheeks when he closed the door behind himself and for a moment the just stared at each other. Then her defenses broke. Her thoughts were heavy with fear and grief as they assaulted his senses but despite their number and their intensity she had not gone to her safe space. He really admired her for that, especially since he felt like he himself was sliding away second by second. 

“Kurt? What are you doing here?” She asked in a small voice.

“Did you think I was going to leave you alone?” He said in lieu of answer, walking toward the bed on exhausted legs. When he laid down beside her and opened his arms Lina slid into his embrace without question, like she’d been made to fit there, holding him tightly and shuddering through silent tears.

“I told myself not to cry,” she choked out. “But he is sleeping, s-so I suppose now is the time. I’m s-sorry for being so weak…”

“Don’t.” She immediately hushed at the quiet command. “You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met Lina.”

“I don’t feel strong… people have died because of me, so many people.”

“That’s not your fault. Are you listening? You’re not to blame for any of the people your father killed or for any of the people Sebastian killed trying to get to you.” 

Maybe neither was he.

He tilted her chin up until their eyes had met, until he thought he could see into the soul of her. She was beautiful inside and out, brave and strong in so many unrealized ways and he only hoped that with distance from the night’s horrors she would come to see that for herself.

“I didn’t kill James,” she reminded him brokenly. “I tried to murder the man I love and because I failed now everyone is at risk.”

“Lina—”

“The worst of it is I still want him, even now. Death and misery follows wherever he walks and yet there is happiness within me that he is alive. What kind of a person am I, to feel that way?”

Kurt’s throat tightened with emotion and for a moment he had to close his eyes to swallow past the lump there. Hearing that name had had almost undone him. Sure, he’d made a choice after learning that a sadistic vampire was hunting him and may have already harmed his family… but that didn’t mean he wasn’t terrified, wasn’t torn apart inside with guilt and worry because he’d chosen Blaine over everything else. He was well aware how terrible of a person that made him, never mind what a terrible son and brother. 

It was all there, buried during the battle and threatening to overwhelm him now. It might succeed in a moment or two but he was needed now, and Kurt knew how to be needed. Being needed meant he didn’t have any choice but to be in control and Kurt never was good at letting people down.

“Only a human one,” he pushed the words out hoarsely as he rubbed her back. “Loving someone doesn’t mean condoning their choices. Don’t go sharing the blame for his misdeeds either because you don’t have any. Just breathe for me. Can you do that?”

She nodded and followed his direction when he took a deep inhale in and a slow exhale out. He needed to breathe too and this was the only way he knew how.

“That’s it. Just breathe. You did so well tonight, you should be proud of yourself and you should never be ashamed of love. Lina I… It’s hard for me to not fear him, to not think of him as something evil, but looking at you helps. Because I can’t imagine you loving someone who didn’t have good in them… and I think that no matter what happens, someone should be left who remembers the good. So hold on to it.”

Lina blinked, fresh moisture welling in her eyes but she gripped him tightly and nodded, pressing herself to him even closer. 

Kurt stroked her hair and instructed her quietly to keep breathing. It wasn’t much, as far as commands went, but just then it felt like the world. Holding his friend and watching as her breathing slowly steadied and then as sleep drained the tension from her body and peace filled her expression, he felt a little less out of control. A little more capable of holding on until there was someone there to hold him. He didn’t know when he’d stopped resisting the fact that he needed holding… maybe somewhere after the third breathe.

~*~

_When Lina slept she often dreamed of James. Sometimes the dreams were nightmares and sometimes they were sweet memories that always left her with the bitter taste of loss when she woke._

_In the dream she had ditched her father’s men and met a beautiful stranger in a café, only he was not so much a stranger now that they had met like this a couple of times. She was flushed with the exhilaration of breaking the rules and the anticipation that only seeing him again seemed to bring._

_And there he was, at the counter flirting with a pretty blond whose eyes were smitten as they drank in his charming smile. Her cheeks were flushed a pretty pink._

_Lina wasn’t pleased back then and wasn’t pleased in the dream either._

_She cleared her throat and tried to ignore the quickening of her pulse as he turned, blue eyes going bright and hot at the sight of her, his mouth widening in a megawatt grin._

_“Hey Gorgeous. You’re late. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show.”_

_“Clearly.” She glared at the woman behind the bar as James took her elbow and led her to their table._

_“Aw, don’t be jealous darlin. It’s only a bit of fun.”_

_“Who is jealous?” She scoffed. “Everyone knows you Americans are weirdly partial to women who dump buckets of bleach onto their heads, especially you Californians.”_

_His laughter was like warm toast and honey, a sweet comfort she wanted with all the regularity of a morning routine._

_“Is that a fact?”_

_They grinned at each other, the only two people in the entire world._

_“Yes it is.”_

_“Hasn’t anyone told you that you shouldn’t believe everything you see in the movies?”_

_“Coming from you Mr. Dean?” She emphasized the name with a pert tsk of her tongue. “I can’t fathom why not. I’ve never met a man so fond of the cinema, or his secrets for that matter.”_

_James did as he so often had. He closed off, his expression guarded, looking anywhere but directly at her as he pushed the conversation away from where he did not want it._

_“Comes from growing up Amish,” he winked to let her know this was nothing more than a joke. “You don’t get out to the movies too much.”_

_“You are not Amish, James Dean.” She said it but even back then they both had known she was only guessing. In Italy, when one was part of the resistance one could never be too careful giving out information._

_“I could be Amish!” he poked his lip out in a pout and now she was sure._

_“You’re too wicked for that.”_

_“But you like wicked.”_

_She took a sip of her drink to avoid the heat of his stare, unwilling to admit how very much she enjoyed the thought of his wickedness and cleared her throat again._

_“Do I get to ask you questions today or are you going to turn up your collar and play cool?”_

_“Ouch. You wound me woman. I don’t play cool, I am cool.”_

_“So you say… at many opportunities. And you’re deflecting me, don’t think I don’t notice.”_

_“Gorgeous and smart. You Darlin are dangerous, just downright dangerous.”_

_“But you like dangerous.”_

_“I like you. More than I should.” His fingers brushed lightly over her knuckles and her heart skipped a beat. He stared at her so penetratingly she wondered if he could not hear it pounding._

_“Three questions,” he allowed. “Same rules.”_

_She grinned, slow and delighted._

_“Why blonds? You have a thing about them… Please don’t lie. Those are the rules James. I’m only trying to understand.”_

_Sometimes it took him quite a while to answer, but Lina knew by then that he would honor the rules of their game. She trusted that he would answer eventually and eventually he always did._

_“My mother was blond.” He said it in a way that Lina did not need to ask whether or not she is gone. She is dead and he loved her greatly._

_“Are you really from California?”_

_“No.”_

_“What were you doing there?”_

_“Is that your final question?”_

_“If you’re going to be mean about it I guess so.”_

_She pouted and his lips spread into that slow adorable smile that was only for her. His answer was quiet and unadorned._

_“Rehab.”_

_“You’re an alcoholic?” She asked, floored with shock._

_“Not really, and that’s four questions. Also this is depressing as hell. The sun is out, you’re young, and I’m gorgeous. Let’s blow this Popsicle stand. ” She rolled her eyes at him, huffing a sigh at being put off, but when he offered her his hand she took it gladly just the same._

_Her hand belonged in his. It always felt that way whether she was asleep or awake._

~*~*~*~

_Dayton_

It seemed like ages ago that Rachel had seen the other wolf disappear. The minutes dragged on, feeling like lifetimes as she waited anxiously on the porch with her body tight with nerves and her senses straining for the smallest hint of approach. Fear of the enemy returning warred with her hope that the Dayton wolves would honor her call. Riding the back of that of course was the worry that their Alpha would arrive, see that she'd killed an unidentified woman on his land, and that there were two terrified and injured humans holed up in the house with her and decide to attack first and ask questions later. 

When she heard a rustle in the grass she was alert within an instant, her gaze boring into the darkness where she'd heard the sound, unflinching even as the telltale glint of watching eyes appeared. They came one after the other, the small tan female who had been tailing her earlier and two males. The other two fell into graceful step behind a lean male with a speckled coat, who was clearly the Alpha if his dominant pheromones were anything to go by. He was being quite pushy with them, the heavy odor combined with the push of his alpha dominance hitting Rachel like a shove. She flattened her ears and lowered her head but fought the urge lower herself onto her belly.

Rachel knew all about dominant displays, they were almost an art form in her opinion, and she knew whatever picture she painted of herself now would be stuck in this Alpha's mind for all their future dealings. So she was respectful, demure in every line of her body and tilt of her head, but straight backed and proud as the other alpha attempted to loom over her. He needed practice looming. 

The alpha male turned his head toward the body of the wizard woman and gave a great sniff and shook his head as if to clear his nose of a bad scent.

 _“What is the meaning of this?”_ His thoughts came in a pleasant if demanding tenor. _“Why has Shuester sent you here?”_

 _“Greetings friend, my name is Rachel,”_ she replied, choosing to stick with the traditional exchange rather than immediately answer the Alpha's questions. _“May the moon guide you. I seek no ill. I only need aide and ask that you grant it.”_ She ignored the spike in aggravation coming from the Alpha and waited expectantly for the proper reply.

The grey and brown wolf gave an irritated huff but he conceded and Rachel felt a thrill of victory.

_“I am Hokar, Alpha of the Dayton wolves and absolutely no aide will be granted to you until you explain what the hell is going on here.”_

_“I must beg your pardon Hokar, but it's not Alpha Shuester who sent me. I am here on the official business of Alpha Anderson of Pack Westerville.”_ She was stretching the truth some with that but Blaine's name had the desired effect of bringing Hokar up short.

Alphas knew better than to cause trouble in other territories but Blaine was different. Blaine had the protection and the favor of the Guild. Deep down everyone knew why, even if they resented it. Hokar seemed to fall in the latter because his fur practically bristled as he huffed again.

 _“Why would Anderson send a Columbus girl to cause trouble in my territory?”_ He sounded rightfully suspicious and more than a little annoyed by the prospect.

_“He has taken a mate.”_

_“What does that mean to me?”_ the Alpha did his best to hide his surprise but Rachel knew she had him off balance by the way he fidgeted where he stood. She stood her ground, confident of the conversations direction. 

_“It means, Hokar, that he'll be either very pleased that you helped me or very very pissed that you didn't.”_

The Alpha lunged at her. It took everything Rachel had not to retreat as Hokar's teeth snapped in front of her face and a growl rumbled low in his throat. She hadn't given him enough credit it seemed. He didn't take kindly at all to the threat.

_“One reason, give me one, why I shouldn’t break your neck.”_

_“Blaine’s mate has human family. That’s his mother and brother in there, abducted by Blaine’s enemies. You kill me and they’re both dead, you delay any longer and the brother will die. Either way Blaine’s mate will be devastated.”_ She could feel that he understood, the sinking realization he was having but she pressed home her advantage anyway. _“I know you might be thinking it’s not really your business, and I suppose it isn’t, but I feel as Blaine’s emissary that I would be remise if I didn’t mention that his bond is as recent as a couple of hours ago. You know how off balance those can be. I have an uncle who lost a hand touching a newly mated sub, I can’t imagine the kind of mood Blaine will be in when he learns that you interfered with my mission and cost the lives of his—”_

 _“Alright! Christ woman, just stop talking!”_ Hokar cursed in a sudden wave of exasperation made sweet with defeat and Rachel fell quiet. She’d have been all smug grin if she had the face for it. She settled for an appropriately demure bow of the head instead. Proper leaders were appropriately humbler after all. 

The important thing now was she’d done it. With Hok’s help she might be able to save Finn and get both of her charges safely to Westerville. She wouldn’t have to tell Noah that she’d failed him.

~*~*~*~

Westerville

When Blaine got to his room and found that Kurt was not there he instantly worried. He felt for Kurt, trying to get a read on his location, his mental emotional physical state in a matter of seconds and his worry quickly turned to confusion when he couldn’t seem to pull Kurt any closer. He was distant. Blaine felt as if he was trying reach someone trapped in a thick fog, his vision clouded and his voice thrown about in directionless echo. Though his heart rate immediately sped up he told himself not to panic. Kurt was in the house after all, and a really deep dreamless sleep would explain the discomforting mental distance easily enough.

The problem was Blaine did not trust that Kurt was sleeping, not after the night they’d had.

The tug of their bond led him back to the room Kurt was supposed to have been sharing with Lina the night before. Though the house omegas had clearly been by to clean and make repairs Blaine still thought he caught a faint whiff of Kurt’s unique scent, made deeper where it was laced with beckoning pheromones. It was a lovely thing, but it made him twice as anxious to find Kurt and spirit him away somewhere where the world couldn’t touch him.

He could almost hear Kurt calling him a caveman for that and his mouth twitched up in a smile as he quietly opened the bedroom door. The lingering scent of heat was stronger inside, but even that couldn’t distract Blaine from the sight that greeted him, of Kurt laying in the middle of the bed holding a sleeping Lina tightly and wracked with shivers.

“Kurt?”

He did not reply. Blaine hurried over to his side and it was only when he took in the glassy look in his eyes and felt the coldness of his limbs that Blaine understood that his mate was slipping into sub space. It was the only territory alphas had never charted, being something unique to submissives. Some thought of it as an affliction and a curse because of the potential danger of a sub retreating to subspace and not coming back up; but many submissives insisted it served a positive purpose, allowing them time to come down from emotional and physical extremes.

There was truth enough in that but regardless, subspace could and had done untold damage to a submissive if their dominant was not there to guide them through it. Blaine’s mind flashed immediately to Emma, laying comatose in the infirmary and his gut clenched with fear so sharp he could taste it bitter in his mouth.

 _‘Don’t panic’_ , he instructed himself as he gathered Kurt up in his arms. It was slightly awkward what with Kurt being taller in this form but he was becoming practiced at the motion (which he didn’t like at all now that he realized it). He cursed himself for an idiot, because he should have known something like this might happen, especially after that weird calm that had come over him earlier. He had known it was false (how could he not know) and he could have broken through it had he been paying enough attention but he’d been debriefing with Ellie. When he’d told Kurt to hold on for him it was because he genuinely thought he could.

Far from think him weak, Blaine had erred on the side of expecting him to handle far too much. Expedition, followed quickly by heat, followed by his family falling off the grid, swiftly followed by having to fight for his life and spend half the night helping secure the safety of the pack, and if Blaine knew Kurt he’d probably dominated Lina so that she could have the security she needed not to similarly fall apart. 

“Oh Baby look at you,” he bemoaned, fearful of how cold Kurt was to the touch. “You never quit. Not even when you need to. I wouldn’t have blamed you, you know.”

There was no response though Kurt’s eyes remained opened staring off somewhere unknowable.

He never should have left him alone for even a minute. He kicked himself mentally for an idiot but there was no time to wallow in guilt. He was already calling out for Elise, Chatelaine and head of the house omegas, as he carried Kurt back to his rooms, asking for a hot bath and warm towels to be prepared. 

Blaine talked to Kurt as he walked. He assured him with much more calm than he felt that he was safe now. Kurt was still not coherent enough to reply but Blaine knew the important thing was to be a steady presence for him. He could do that. He’d seen countless alphas taking care of their mates, had even helped Allie take care of his mother when his father was too busy to do otherwise. There wasn’t any reason that Kurt shouldn’t be fine if he got him warm and he felt safe enough to come back from wherever he’d slipped away to. Or so he told himself over and over.

He’d make here in his arms with him feel like the safest place there ever was, he determined to himself as the room came into view. Elise was already busy at work inside with two omegas that both looked as if they’d been pulled straight from their beds. The male hadn’t even had time to flatten the hair sticking up on top of his head.

Their tiredness did not appear to affect their dedication to their duty because they were busy making up the bed and Blaine could hear the water going in the bathroom when he carried Kurt inside. The two omega maids stood so fast and dipped their heads so low Blaine admired them for not falling over. 

A second later Elise Gorski came bustling from the bathroom, her snowy white hair barely contained in the braid she’d worn to bed. Her stern face was weathered with exhaustion. Brown eyes that Blaine always remembered regarding the world with the cleverness of a feline were soft when she spotted Kurt in his arms.

“Poor Mały Miś,” she murmured as she approached them. She clucked her tongue in sympathy and turned a stern eye to the two omegas who had not moved even to breathe it seemed since Blaine had entered. 

“Well, don’t stand there like geese. Help him get the poor thing into the bath. He’ll likely be hungry when he wakes so I better go and wake Scott. You mind our Alpha while I’m gone. You reflect on me and the rest of the house, so just you both remember that. Hear me? ” 

The instructions shocked life back into the pair but it was the female who proved to be bolder as she moved first to approach Blaine. Even so she barely looked up from her feet and Blaine could feel her anxiousness spiking the air around her so keenly it was a taste in the back of his throat, sharp as a bitter wine. 

Being around the Alpha could be nerve wracking for an omega, especially one who wasn’t regularly around dominants but Blaine knew that wasn’t the sole reason for her anxiety. She was assisting with the most precious of cargo and truly he and Kurt must look terrible covered in dried blood and dirt. She’d be sensitive to his current mental distress and frightened of doing something to hurt him further. 

The pack was too tightly bonded not to share in each other’s burdens and the night had not been a good night for anyone, but she swallowed her fear and between her and the shyer male Blaine got himself and his mate situated in the bath. Kurt sucked in a sharp breath when he sank into the heated water, his body rattling with new stronger shivers and Blaine got in quickly beside him, drawing him up in a tight embrace and murmuring softly to him.

“B-Blaine?” 

Kurt’s voice was so tiny, so lost it was almost enough to break his heart, but it was finally there and for that Blaine was elated. 

“Shhh, Sweetheart. Breathe with me, okay?” Kurt’s breathes remained labored but Blaine saw how hard he tried to follow instruction, to match the rise and fall of Blaine’s chest against his back and he murmured his praises softly as he shifted them. “You’re doing great Kurt.”

When Kurt was comfortably sat in his lap with his head cradled against Blaine’s shoulder the alpha turned to his two helpers and gave them a warm smile of gratitude. 

“Thank you. You guys are life savers.” Two tentative smiles blossomed on their faces, their relief palpable as they beamed under the simple praise. 

“Will that be all Alpha?” The female asked and Blaine gestured wordlessly to the sparkly pink loofah (a gag birthday gift from David) hanging out of reach and waited for the young woman to hand it to him. Once handed he reached for the soap on the small shelf just near his shoulder and lathered up, focusing intently on the task of washing away the dirt and grime that covered each of Kurt’s limbs. Kurt shivered against his chest, his ragged breaths slowly becoming steady as they aligned with Blaine’s and his body adjusted to the change in temperature.

Blaine kept his movements gentle, making low wordless sounds in what he hoped was a soothing manner as he scrubbed. With each layer of dirt that was removed he wished that the night’s terrors could be washed away so easily, that the soul was as easily cleansed of war and death as a body could be rid of grime. 

The sound of uncomfortable shifting drew his focus away from Kurt and he realized the two omegas were still waiting to be dismissed, though they were both watching him with a strange expression on their faces. The male, a dark haired teenager with lovely bronzed skin, flushed when Blaine’s gaze landed on him and he ducked his head as if guilty for being caught staring. Ediz, Blaine plucked his name from the boy’s mind, and then he searched for the girls as well, pausing briefly to smile at them again until they were both comfortable enough to look up and offer him sweet, if tentative, smiles in return.

“Thank you, Chelsey, Ediz, I really appreciate it. Can you have Elise scrounge up some drinking chocolate for me please?” Allie had always had dark drinking chocolate at the ready when his mother came out of the subspace. Blaine remembered sitting with her as a cub, drinking from a smaller cup, while she sipped with one hand and clutched him tightly with the other.

The female, Chelsey, nodded, her eyes brightening as she admitted with a blush that someone named Robbie always made sure that she had water and a bite of chocolate when she was coming down from subspace. Images of a young man with a crooked smile and adoring eyes trickled into Blaine’s head and his heart was filled with a warmth that he knew started and ended with the love practically burgeoning from the omega woman’s chest and he grinned. Her mate’s name was Robert. He had previously worked in town as a mechanic. 

Young, mated and cubless, Blaine remembered sorting Chelsey’s Robbie and many of the other young bonded Alphas on the west end of the lake near the rock caves. In a pinch they were a last line of defense for those families with cubs hidden within the caves, the safe house already having been full. Drawing his mind back to the expectant omega female and her companion he thanked them again for their service and they murmured their formal but no less warm goodbyes and Blaine was finally left alone with Kurt.

Kurt, who had been so seemingly unshakable only hours before, who was curled up vulnerable and bare now in his arms his mind floating somewhere out of his reach. He wondered if it was above or below, if it was a place with time and doors… if it had only had doors Blaine wouldn’t have slept till he found them and thrown every last one open wide until he’d found him again.

“But maybe you don’t need me dragging you back. Maybe you just need to be wherever you are until you’re ready to come back on your own,” he whispered as he ran the loofah over Kurt’s pale legs. Up and clear of the water, over his rising and falling chest, over bare shoulders and the long expanse of his neck. He let the repeated motions sooth him. He pressed a kiss to Kurt’s wet cheek before he lathered shampoo into his hair, and Kurt inhaled quiet and quick, his eyelashes fluttering sleepily as he attempted to squirm closer. His movements were sluggish and uncoordinated as if he were drugged or wasted and Blaine bit his lip, as if the physical act could help him hold his worry at bay.

He gently kneaded Kurt’s scalp as he reminded him of how amazing he’d been, how proud he was of him and tried his best to soothe his bodily discomforts.

“Does this feel okay? Can you tell me if you’re still cold?” Blaine asked, almost not daring to hope for a response.

Kurt’s reply was so mumbled that it couldn’t even be understood by Lycan sensitive ears but Blaine didn’t care. He was just relieved that Kurt was coherent enough now to make any sort of reply at all.

“One more time for me Love. I couldn’t hear that.”

“…‘said I’m not cold.” Kurt mumbled again, this time loud enough for Blaine to hear and he smiled his relief into his mate’s skin as he pressed light relieved kisses against his neck. Kurt’s lips tilted into a sleepy sort of grin as his eyelashes fluttered again and raised half-mast so that he was peering blearily at Blaine. His eyes had turned a beautiful grey from the reflection of the water. 

“You’re so warm,” Kurt mused.

Blaine held him tighter, rocking their bodies gently as he pressed their faces close nuzzling skin to skin and breathed in the clean wet scent of his lover’s skin like it was the only oxygen in the room.

“Good,” he replied.

And finally, it seemed that it was. 

~*~*~*~

_It always started the same way, the dream. It was dark and in the dark there were sounds: harsh breathing, the scraping of nails on hard wood floor, the slow steady drop of dripping moisture. One whimper, two whimpers, her whimper, she whimpered…_

_Brittany would clap her hand over her mouth and try not to make more sounds. Sometimes there would be another girl with her there in the dark, sometimes there would be a monster with white fur and bloody fangs. This time it was the girl, pale blond hair just like hers, pretty brown eyes._

_“Mummy… Mummy, yum yum. Where’s my mummy? Is she all gone?”_

_And Brittany would remember the day that Sire had come. He had unlocked their cages with food in hand after a couple forevers had passed. They’d been going so very hungry. She would remember forever the way they had gobbled at the meat until the red had trickled down their chins and dripped to the floor._

_Drip drip drip._

_Sire had told them a story, a story about catching their mommies and bringing them to dinner. He’d called it a rare treat and he’d laughed and laughed at the joke._

_“Rare meat: rare treat. Get it?”_

_Kala had screamed. She’d screamed so long her mind had left and been too scared to come back._

_In every dream he would knock the meat from Brittany’s hands, bye bye mommy, grab her chin and squeeze hard. His face would press close and she would feel his breath wash over her like fog, thick and cloying._

_He was always so young: a lost boy, older than her but not really a man yet. His eyes were always crying._

_“I’m only kidding,” he’d say, voice breaking. “Just a bit of fun. No need to cry Pretty Girl. I’m motherless too. Shh you pretty thing. Don’t you know I’ll always be here for you?”_

_Brittany would cry and Kala would scream._

_“You want to leave me don’t you…” his fingers would squeeze tighter, until her jaw threatened to break. She’d tell him no but he’d never believe her._

_“Yes you do! You want to die and leave me alone just like her! Well I’ve got good news for you Babe, I’m going to kill you. Kill you dead. What do you think about that?”_

_She cried harder and Sire always loved her again after that._

_“Shhh. Don’t fret darling, don’t you ever fret. It’s not really death if you’re born again. That’s the secret, trust me I know.”_

_He did. So she hadn’t been afraid to die, at least not until the very last second._

_“He told me it would be like falling asleep… ‘You’ll wake up bigger and brighter than ever, My Boy’. It’s not you know, like falling asleep, not at all. I’d never lie to you My Girl. This is going to hurt like hell.”_

_She always felt his fangs before she woke and just before the pain shook her from sleep she’d see a flash of silver and the glowing green eyes of a serpent._

On the pull out bed in Penny’s living room Brittany Pierce woke up screaming. Santana and Penny were there a moment later.

~*~*~*~

_Westerville_

Kurt felt the sun warm on his face before he even opened his eyes, so by the time he had blinked them open and rubbed the sleep from his eyes it only took his sluggish facilities a moment to gear up enough to realize that he had over slept.

The day before came rushing back, almost overwhelming in its weight and all its frightening details and he shivered. The pack had been moved to the forest, people would need help situating, the students had to be moved back to the school, the MacTere were dead except for their two prisoners, the police might come, vampires were coming, a vampire had come after people close to him, his family was missing…

A distant pressure was building between his eyes and he closed them tight as he pinched the bridge of his nose and took in a shuddering breath.

 _“Easy love,”_ Blaine’s thoughts came to him and Kurt immediately latched onto the soothing warmth spreading in his chest and followed the bond until he thought he had a good idea of his mate’s location. The safe house, the place they quarantined single subs in heat. He remembered it from his first tour. 

_“Good morning.”_ Blaine’s voice was warm honey in his mind and Kurt took a moment just to savor it.

_“Morning. Why did you let me sleep?”_

_“Because you needed sleep.”_

_“So did you.”_ Kurt reminded him, intent on joining him as quickly as possible. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and blinked in surprise at how remarkably refreshed he felt. He didn’t feel like running any races but after the night before he’d expected to feel a lot worse. He almost felt good what with the steady burn of warmth in his veins. It brought to mind the feeling water lapping at his skin, smooth soap sluicing down his chest and the sweet touch of chocolate laying heavy on his tongue and he flushed even hotter, his whole body tingling with it.

Blaine didn’t bother commenting on that. They both knew he couldn’t afford to sleep in right now and Kurt guilty for being a slug-a-bed when Blaine needed a strong capable mate now more than ever. How long would it take him to regret saddling himself with some knock kneed human convert who fell apart after his first fight?

_“Kurt stop that. Didn’t you hear any of the things I said last night?”_

He had, and it had meant the world to him but some dark corner of his mind insisted on reminding him that it wasn’t like Blaine could have said anything else given the state Kurt had been in.

 _“If you keep questioning how ridiculously crazy I am about you Kurt I’ll march up there and make you regret it.”_ Kurt didn’t even start at being caught again in a moment of self-pity, so familiar now with Blaine’s presence in his mind the back and forth of their thoughts seemed seamless. Blaine’s threat of punishment had far too mush teasing in it to be a true threat, and there was far too much love behind it for it not to wrap around Kurt’s heart and squeeze. It gave him what he needed to push the doubt away.

_“Sounds intriguing. What kind of punishment are we talking about here?”_

Blaine’s laughter was a balm. When Kurt was dressed respectably enough for walking about the house in some of Blaine’s clothes (he was going to have to get his things moved from the house on Cherry Street now he realized) he followed it and the insistent tug on his heart strings to the long brick building behind Anderson house where subs could be assured safety during their heats.

It was built like a barracks, all long hallways and room after room with little decoration. There was a stairwell near the back exit leading up to a second floor and down below to a basement floor. The safe house was unusually busy (to Kurt’s estimation) what with the whole pack having been relocated and the students displaced from the school.

He spotted more than a couple of omegas in service uniforms hurrying about dusting, cleaning, and carrying what looked like linens and toiletries to the different rooms. Rather than have doors most of the rooms were barred by heavy iron gates. Kurt remembered Allie explaining that it was so the guards could see in at all times and make sure the submissives were neither being hurt nor hurting themselves during their most vulnerable state. 

The rooms were occupied now by members of the pack, old and young, as well as small groups of students. He had a strange moment of discomfort where he nearly tripped over his own feet when he realized that they were all falling quiet and staring at him as he walked by. It was like being the only one naked in the room (which was really ironic because he was clothed and many of _them_ were naked). 

When he noticed that some of them were standing as he passed, lowering their heads toward the floor and averting their gazes he was confused, unsure what he could have done to make them all react to hm that way. It was only when he recognized one of Lina’s neighbors, the one who had called him Sir and looked at him with such awe the night before that he began to understand.

They were reacting that way because he wasn’t just Kurt Hummel anymore, he was their Alpha’s mate. He was a person of unknown power and undoubtable influence; of course they were watching him. It was strange to suddenly realize he had that kind of power. That he could silence a room by walking into it. By the way they watched him, wary as if he might point to one of them and shout off with their head, Kurt didn’t doubt that he could have cleared the entire floor with a single bark of command.

Was it trippy? Definitely, and he wasn’t quite sure if he liked it or not.

As soon as Lina’s neighbor spotted him the man rose from the bed where he was crouched helping a younger male set up a cot. He stood to attention like a soldier, bowing his head low before he met Kurt’s eyes again with what was becoming a familiar and friendly grin on his face.

“Good morning Sir. It’s great to see you back on your feet.”

Kurt’s nose told him alpha male, but the name John floated up from somewhere in the depth of the shared space of his mate’s mind. Kurt returned the man’s smile.

“Good morning, John,” he tried the name tentatively and was rewarded with an even bigger grin. It was so bright Kurt was almost blinded by it and he could feel Blaine’s amusement bubbling up in response. Kurt ignored it and thanked the man in front of him for his kindness.

“It’s no bother, Sir, we were worried my Nathan and I. Weren’t we Nate?”

The man at his side (omega male so said the nose) nodded shyly, daring the briefest glance at Kurt before lowering his head and answering in a low but sweet tone, “The bullets came so close, John was worried about the cub….”

Kurt’s gaze honed on the petite male’s abdomen where he confirmed that yes, his belly was extended ever so slightly beneath his shirt, a small curve that some might have called adorable even. To Kurt it looked so absurd he could only stare at it, his brain almost refusing to accept the startling visual of a pregnant male. 

So that was what he would look like. He blinked, swallowing back the initial shock of it and considering the sweet faced young man before him (he couldn’t be older than nineteen Kurt was sure) and the almost absent minded way he laid protective hands on his belly.

“…Of course I was worried about him when he went out there,” Nathan was saying. “I don’t like to imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t been there, Sir. I hope you’re better this morning?”

Nathan dared a glance at him then, his pretty brown eyes questioning and his hand reaching sightlessly for his mate’s (the two joining fingers with the ease) and Kurt found his smile coming easy this time.

“I’m fine, thank you both for asking and please, call me Kurt.”

“Oh I don’t know if I’d dare.” Nathan’s eyes went wide as she babbled nervously. “Not after I said such awful things about you when you arrived here. Oh-” he seemed to realize what he’d said only after he said it and his whole face flushed red with mortification and Kurt saw his hand tighten around John’s. The omega male rushed to explain himself.

“I only mean Sir that there was a lot of talk, you should have heard the things…. When Morgan said you were human, well no one expected anything good… ” Kurt winced and Nathan fell quiet, shame faced. 

John looked away for the first time, guilt written in every line of his posture and for a moment Kurt thought he might be angry, but the emotion flared and then died almost as quickly as it had come.  
It wasn’t like he hadn’t known the pack was talking about him, or that they disliked humans. He already knew he would have to win them all over. At least these two seemed to have come around and maybe that meant he’d done something right last night, despite how helpless he felt about everything.

“I thought you were all savages when I got here… Good thing people can surprise you right?” he offered as an olive branch. He laughed even though he felt (and sounded no doubt) almost painfully awkward but it seemed to put the other two lycans at ease, their smiles returning. 

“Yes”, John agreed tucking Nathan beneath his arm. “It’s a very good thing.”

Kurt watched Nathan look up at his mate, such love in his eyes and a new sort of smugness to his expression and wanted suddenly to know their story. Another day he thought as he remembered his own mate waiting for him below and all the pressing things to be done. 

Kurt made his goodbyes and made his way for the stairs.

Blaine was waiting for him at the bottom. Kurt thought he could see Ian’s sandals not far beyond but his eyes were for Blaine as he met him, his heart picking up pace the closer he got.

Blaine looked incredible standing there in his shorts and his t-shirt when he should look absurd, barefoot and wild haired surrounded by stone walls and flickering torch light. Torch light for god’s sake! Somehow torch light and wizards who wore sandals were part of Kurt’s life now, along with the blood and the death he’d witnessed the night before and it was all because of the man he was now standing in front of. So for a silent moment neither of them said a word, simply regarding each other with fresh eyes and minds not bogged down by hormones or overloaded with adrenaline. 

Before the MacTere had attacked Kurt had been angry with him. Blaine’s eyes searched his, hopeful but wary, obviously wondering where they stood now. Kurt’s mouth twitched up in an almost smile as he considered. There was lingering anger about what Blaine had done. Kurt was sure he’d never agree with his choice but nearly dying had a way of putting certain things into perspective.

The man he was looking at: he was the reason he’d felt safe enough to fall asleep last night. He was what made him feel brave enough to wake up and face the day, what made him feel solid and real enough to believe in who he knew himself to be and what he knew himself to be capable of, and it was all because of that emotion so naked in his eyes and hanging on his vocal chords until his voice was thick and sweet with it.

“Are you alright, Kurt?” 

Blaine always had this way about saying his name…. He said it like it had sanctity, like it could produce a miracle simply by being uttered… like Kurt himself was the miracle he realized as he pondered it. He knew that in reality there was nothing less holy or miraculous than he was, but he’d dare anyone to defy loving a man who said their name like that; someone who believed them to be among all the best and brightest. 

Sometimes he needed this: he needed all of the dust to settle and the doubt to fade and to simply be reminded that he had everything it took to make a dream come true. And Blaine was better than all the best dreams. He was a living, breathing, complex reality and he made love something equally complex. He made it and Kurt by its touch come alive.

That meant more to him than lights, curtains, placeholders or save the dates; more to Kurt than anything. 

Kurt forgot all about Ian standing just a few feet away as he placed his hands on Blaine’s sides and pulled him into a full bodied hug. He leaned down, fitting his cheek against Blaine’s throat and nuzzled into his warmth. Blaine’s arms came around his waist, pulling him closer as they breathed slowly in and out, attuning their bodies to each other’s rhythm and letting the lingering tension between them fall away. 

They would deal with it all: the mistrust, the walls they both still too regularly hid behind, the day to day issues and the pursuit of new dreams. They would do it together, one step at a time. 

Hand in hand. Blaine seemed to answer his thoughts, sliding his hand down Kurt’s arm until Kurt responded instinctively and lifted his hand so that their palms pressed together. Their fingers curled around each other’s and Blaine tilted his head so that he could nuzzle his nose over Kurt’s skin. He lightly licked the area of Kurt’s mating mark and Kurt shivered, his heart expanding in his chest. 

It was too warm, and he was too big inside, to pay any mind to anything else besides what he held in his arms. What he held was safety, connection, love. Who he held was Blaine and they were all intrinsically the same. 

“No,” he finally answered when he had breath enough, stepping back so that their eyes could meet. “But I know I will be, so long as we have each other, and I’m never letting you go Blaine.”

Never.

Come vampires, wizards, or whatever else may. 

Blaine squeezed his hands and then immediately rolled his eyes when Ian loudly cleared his throat, a not subtle at all reminder that he was waiting and that they had important things to deal with.

“We questioned one of the strays already,” Blaine explained as he led him down the dimly lit hall. Ian gave them both a droll look as he fell into step beside him but Kurt thought he saw him hide a hint of a grin. “Duval was a lot more helpful than I expected him to be.” 

“He stopped Sebastian from hurting Lina, or tried to anyway, and before that when he had a chance to burn her he didn’t take it,” Kurt added, remembering Nick’s puzzling actions from the night before and eyeing Blaine’s scowl. They both had a pretty good idea why that was. Blaine still had to decide what to do about Jeff’s behavior and something of course would have to be done with Nick when all was said and done. He wouldn’t say that he trusted Duval but he didn’t exactly want the man to die either, especially after witnessing what he meant to Jeff.

Kurt had no idea how much Blaine had seen but after last night Kurt knew that Jeff was unique, and so was Nick. If he and Blaine hadn’t always been as they were now, he didn’t think Nick and Jeff had always been ‘Nick and Jeff’ either. 

Kurt eyed Ian who lifted his brows at him before nodding slightly and clearing his throat.

“Love is a powerful motivator it seems, on all accounts.” The old man blithely ignored Blaine’s scowl and went on. “Mr. Duval told us what he could, but unfortunately it wasn’t much more than we presently know. His orders came from his Alpha, who felt obliged to keep certain details to himself. ”

“Which means we’ve got to talk to Smythe, right?” Kurt guessed with a grimace and Blaine nodded.  
“If James told any of them about his plans it would be Sebastian.”

That meant that if anyone knew why his family had disappeared and what had happened to them it was Sebastian Smythe. Kurt feared for his family’s chances.

“Do you think he’ll talk?” he asked.

Apprehension trickled through Kurt as Ian and Blaine shared a dark look and confirmed his fears. Something else passed between them. It was fleeting but it did not sit well with Kurt; nor did the previously unheard grimness of Blaine’s voice when he replied.

“He’ll talk with the right motivation.”

~*~*~*~

_Sir Ector of Castle Sauvage was a kind man but a hard one. It is said that in his youth he wandered deep into the Sauvage Forest, where magic was deep and had ancient roots and the fae roamed freely between this world and the next. He came to a castle held in fear by the dragon Tyrog and slayed the beast, forever claiming the castle and its treasure in the name of Mac Murchadha._

_It is known that dragons are uncommonly clever creatures, full of magic so ancient it was present before the veil between this land and Avalon was opened. Tyrog on his dying breath commended Ector for his skill and cunning and offered him a word from his future in reward. Ector’s men counseled against it, for it was feared that once a dragon spoke of the future it would come to pass, whether they spoke of blessing or curses (and it is known that dragons always speak of both). Fearlessly Ector agreed and Tyrog opened his great maw and spoke his last._

_He prophesied that but one son would spring from Ector’s loins and he would be as clever and skilled in battle as his father. Because he was born of a dragon slayer he would have dragon’s soul. Such a gift meant that his hair would be as red as Tyrog’s scales and he would be friend to both water and flame. But dragon’s hearts are cold and their natures riddled with greed and stubbornness, and so it would be too with Ector’s son. Like all dragons he would be great and he would be terrible. Only time would tell which he would be remembered for._

_When Kay Mac Murchadha was born it was said that stars fell from the sky in brilliant showers and that the dragons in the belly of the world all roared in unison. It was a difficult birth. The lady screamed and cried for death and many feared that she would be lost, but staying with them at the castle that winter was Ector’s old nurse. She had spent the most of her life learning the art of healing. She had educated the daughters of his house until they were too old, and the sons until they went to foster at other noble houses._

_She was there now to see Ector’s wife through the birth of their one and only child, and it was due to her skill that the lady survived the birth of her son. Bearing great love for his wife Ector promised her a reward in the form of any favor her heart desired. The woman replied that what she wanted was children of her own, a gift no man could give, but should she think of something else he would be first to know._

_And so Kay Mac Murchadha came into the world._

_The stories surrounding his birth were ones that Kay liked to tell any of the boys and girls his age who would listen, terrifying them into playing the games he chose or handing over prized possessions that he took a shining too. Kay was the son of a powerful and noble lord so it was not that he wanted for much, it was simply that Kay had an eye for things that glittered. Everything that was sweet he wanted to taste, everything that was fun he wanted to do, everything that had even the slightest bit of value to anyone else he wanted for himself, sometimes just to see how badly they truly wanted it to begin with._

_He was a strange child in many ways. Wicked, perhaps even cruel, some were heard to say. A bully said many others. Misunderstood his mother insisted. Cursed, his father sometimes fretted in his darkest musings. But in many other ways Kay was a boy like any other. He liked to ride horses and play in the mud, longed for the pride of his father, and loved his mother fiercely. Many might have thought the child a devil if not for the sweetness of his smile when he was in his mother’s arms and the angelic voice that would fill the hall as they sang together during the Yule season._

_One summer day Kay demanded his mother take him riding. He kicked up such a fuss that his mother, who never had been known to deny her son anything he asked for, saddled her mare and took him as far and as fast as his heart desired to go that day. The lady saw a storm approaching on the horizon and knew they should head back for the keep but could not bring herself to deny her son’s pleas for a minute more, and a minute more, and a minute more…_

_The storm was unlike anything that land had ever seen or would see again. The winds and the rain were so fierce that mother and son were forced to tie the horse and find what shelter they could among the trees. There was little to be had, but Lady Mac Murchadha wrapped Kay up warm in her cloak and sang softly in his ear until the boy’s fear had faded and he had fallen asleep, unbothered by the torrents of rain that soaked them both to their skins. They were found the following day and though Kay was fit as a fiddle his mother took desperately ill._

_The day she died he disappeared and it was many long hours before Ector found him at the top of the highest tower in the castle. Kay had stood on the sill of the tower window leaning out into the open air and Ector swore he had never known fear like the fear he felt then._

_“Are the stories true? Am I dragon souled? Tell me for I want to fly away!”_

_“And why do you wish to fly away my son?” Ector asked, slowly approaching the boy as not to startle him into losing his footing._

_“I detest this place! The people are all mindless peasants. Of course I can’t stay here. Mother would have understood. I need to find her.”_

_“She is gone Kay, gone where we cannot follow.”_

_“You lie! She would not leave me here among these… these sheep! She would not leave me, she would not!”_

_“No she would not, not by her choosing. But death comes for us all my son, even dragons. You can jump but you cannot fly. So you must decide. Will you leave me here without her and without the son I love? Must I lose you too?”_

_It is said by those who bore witness that the boy stood staring at his father until the fire of hatred cooled from his gaze and his face crumpled with sorrow. He flung himself into Sir Ector’s arms and the knight crushed his son to his chest in relief and they wept._

_“I’m sorry papa, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”_

_There were none who heard the boy weeping that day who were ever heard to call him a devil again._

_“Troubled,” they clucked. “Poor wee lamb.”_

_They might have been too forgiving, because troubled or not Kay was still Kay and those who did not cater to him out of fear knew it was best to avoid him. And though he was never heard to admit it, it made for a very lonely existence._

_For years the only confidant he truly had was his father, until Kay’s eleventh summer when a strange man in a muddied cloak came to the castle for an audience with sir Ector. His name was Ian, and he was a powerful wizard. Kay did not know what a wizard wanted with his father but they talked for long hours in secret, holed up in his father’s chambers._

_When the wizard had departed, promising to return in a fortnight, Ector had called for Kay. That night the boy learned that the old nurse from the stories his mother used to tell him had died and before she had died she had finally figured out how Ector could repay his debt to her. She had been caring for a boy, a known bastard- though it was not known which lord of the house he belonged to- and it was her wish that Ector take him and raise him as his own._

_The boy would never be a lord, but at least this way he could proudly wear the name Mac Murchadha, the name of his blood, and he might even one day be knighted. Ector felt he owed his old nurse this but Kay was far less enthusiastic. He did not want some bastard hanging around, even if they were related by blood, for he was likely to be even more hopeless than all the rest. He was likely to be snot nosed, whiny and probably too stupid to know his place on top of it. But a debt was a debt, and that is how Kay found himself chasing a wolf through the halls of the castle in the dead of night._

_Ian had brought the boy to the castle a fortnight later as he had promised and Kay had kept well away and watched from his favorite spot in the high tower, bored with the whole affair but still wanting to be able to watch if he felt enough interest. He did not go down to meet his new ‘brother’ and he did not answer any of the servant’s calls when the evening meal came and went._

_He was a lord’s son. He shouldn’t have to eat at table with a bastard anyway._

_It was long after the sun had set and he was finally making his way to his rooms when he saw it, a streak of white in the darkened hall, piercing blue eyes that met his in the dark and panicked before the hound rushed past him. Only it wasn’t a hound. Kay was familiar with all his father’s hunting dogs and he’d never seen a hound that looked like that._

_That was a wolf. How a wolf had gotten into the castle he did not know but it was interesting, a mystery, and that meant Kay must attempt to solve it. He chased the creature up the winding stairs and into the high tower, rushing through the door with his mother’s penknife gripped tightly in hand just in case the beast should spring, but to his great surprise the white wolf had vanished from sight._

_In its place was a small boy huddling in the furs on the floor, naked from the top of his tow colored head of curls to the bottom of his pink toes. Kay would have asked who he was, but he was not stupid like everyone else he knew. The boy could only be one person._

_“You’re him aren’t you? The bastard boy?”_

_The boy nodded his head hesitantly, shivering in wide eyed terror as his blue eyes welled with tears._

_“I want Grandmother.”_

_He was snotty and whiny just like Kay had known he would be. But then again he was also here when a second ago there had been a large white beast. That at least was interesting._

_“She’s dead, that’s why you’re here now.” Kay reminded him bluntly watching as the boy’s tears spilled down his pale cheeks. “So, tell me Bastard, which one of my uncles is your father?”_

_He needed to know. Kay had heard the stories of course of men who could turn into wolves, but none from his bloodline before. It was said that mad king Uther himself had been one of the were-kind, half man half demon. His wolf had been white just like the wolf he’d been chasing a moment before if village gossip could be believed, which was really always in doubt._

_The boy mumbled something through his tears and Kay rolled his eyes to the ceiling._

_“If you expect me to hear you through all that blubbering you’re sadly mistaken boy. Even my ears aren’t that good.”_

_“I said I don’t know! I’ve never had a father.” The scrawny thing was glaring at him now, like it was Kay’s fault that he was born a bastard._

_“Of course you haven’t. Who would want you?” Kay sneered in response, angered at how utterly useless the boy was being. “Why are you still wailing like a babe?!”_

_“I don’t like it here. I want Gr-”_

_“Aye, Scrawny you want your grandmother. So you’ve said. And still, she has gone to a place you can’t follow. You’re all alone in the world now…” Kay faltered, for sitting at the tip of his tongue where the words ‘like me’. He did not like those words. Neither the way they made him feel or the way they made him want to do something to make the small boy stop crying._

_“Though you don’t have to be. I suppose…” He had no earthly clue why he said it, only that the boy clearly needed looking after lest he wind up hung from a gallows or burned at a stake for a demon. Kay considered that to be a huge waste. Demon or not, the boy was different, better than all of the common folk that surrounded them. Better even maybe than him, for Kay could neither fly nor turn into anything so fierce as a wolf._

_It was almost criminal, that such a magnificent gift should be wasted on a blubbering little boy who had no idea of its potential! It was enough to make him want to hurt someone, but he couldn’t bring himself to kick or shove the boy as he might any of the village lads._

_The boy was looking up at him with such naked hope it made Kay nearly afraid. All his words dried beneath the weight of that dreadful need in the younger boy’s eyes, that unbelievably blinding innocence. The world would kick that out of him, but Kay couldn’t quite bring himself to be the one to hit first._

_Kay slowly extended his arm. He wasn’t sure what he was about, but nevertheless he offered the boy his hand._

_“I suppose we’re brothers now…” It was true wasn’t it? Yes, father had said so, “…and I suppose that means I have to take care of you. What do they call you Scrawny?”_

_The boy beamed at him bright enough to put the sun to shame. His eyes were wide and luminous as he replied, “Arthur. And I’m not scrawny!”_

_Kay laughed._

_Scrawny had spirit. He decided he liked that._

~*~*~

Between wizards and Hunters fire was something that wolves had come to fear and Sebastian Smythe was no different. He’d seen the Hunter’s fire in action, burning through flesh and bone with insatiable thirst, decimating whole packs in minutes and leaving nothing but dust. He’d been raised on gruesome fairytales of men and women held captive by wizards and held beneath the blue flame. Every wolf alive made it a personal mission to avoid the fire.

So yeah maybe he was sweating a little when the greatest wizard in history stepped into his cage with his pet dog and started asking him questions, idly moving a thin blue flame between his fingers like ribbon.

“Good morning Mr. Smythe, I trust you slept well?” the Merlin asked. His voice was aged but smooth, the English accent too precise to be genuine and likely only meant to lull the listener into a false sense of security. He sounded like he could be the pottering grandfather in a children’s book. 

Sebastian snorted in reply, not bothering to answer the absurd question.

“Nothing to say for yourself Sebastian?” Anderson was next to speak. Sebastian stared at him balefully as the shorter man came right up to the bed where Sebastian sat and had the nerve to loom. God, Sebastian was almost a full head taller than him older (if only by a year) and stronger and Blaine still managed to fill up a room like he was twice as big as he was, all wild hair and piercing eyes and dominance. Sebastian sighed. It was such a god damn waste.

His lips tilted in a smirk.

“You know I thought the wizards had properly snipped you, but maybe I was wrong. Would you really have me tortured Anderson?” Sebastian cooed. “Well, color me impressed. Maybe there’s still something Clan in you after all.”

Sebastian watched attentively as Blaine’s little doe eyed mate stiffened and pinned him with a questioning look that promised trouble. Anderson glanced at his mate long enough for Sebastian to guess that they were having some sort of silent domestic over his impending torture and the ball of tension coiled in Sebastian’s gut, barely acknowledged until then, eased. 

If Anderson’s mate was up on some high horse about torture there was no way he’d get the flame. Which, you know was good, but was still rather pathetic on their end. It was amazing really that he’d lost everything to such fools. How had it even happened?

Sebastian sneered at the other male, remembering all too keenly their fight and the cold stare of the other wolf’s blue eyes. 

The humiliation returned, flushing his cheeks red as he glared at Kurt. He couldn’t believe he’d been dominated by a convert! A wolf barely older than a month and full of mewling human sympathies, who was too weak to stomach the torture of an enemy that would have gladly seen every last one of them dead.

It was a small consolation at least, knowing eventually this idiot would be the death of Blaine whether Sebastian lifted a finger or not.

“Would that inspire you to be more helpful?” Blaine asked, apparently finished appeasing his mate. “Your friend Duval was pretty helpful.”

Pain lit up Sebastian’s chest and a snarl ripped from his throat before he could suppress it. It took a moment to swallow back the emotion, to clear his eyes of the unfathomable sting of tears.

What the fuck did he care if they’d tortured Nick? Sebastian had rescued him from the smoking remains of his pack and given him _everything_. The bastard had repaid him by betrayed him for the first pretty piece of ass to turn his head. 

“Good,” he bit out through clenched teeth. He wanted to believe it when he said, “I hope all you left was ash.”

But he remembered the ash drifting down on the wind when he’d followed his father to a tiny village in France. There was supposed to have been other MacTere there, as well as food and shelter from Hunter patrols. They’d found ransacked homes, charred from the inside out. The ash had been pulled out open windows and doors, picked up by the wind and tossed like snowfall. 

The cubs they’d found were all of them grey, for they had been covered in it.

The pain in his chest came back and Sebastian looked away from his captors hiding his eyes, and hating the fact that he could be so stupidly sentimental about a man who had double crossed him. He refused to let Anderson see him so weak.

But Hummel, damn him seemed to see and to Sebastian’s horror the convert kneeled in front of him and pinned him with those eerie blue eyes that could have been ice cubes for the way that they could make a guy feel chilled down to the bone. He seemed to stare into Sebastian’s soul, his dominant grip holding Sebastian tightly just like he had the night before. To Sebastian’s continued horror, Kurt’s voice was firm but so achingly _gentle_ when he assured him, “We didn’t torture him.”

“Why? Didn’t have the stomach for it?!” Sebastian snapped, desperately wishing the other male would back away, or even look away because that stare of his was enough to drive a guy out of his mind.

“Nick helped us because he cares about Jeff. I know you understand love, and despite your otherwise monstrous attitude you might even love Nick,” Kurt replied and Sebastian sneered, because if Anderson’s mate was this naïve he was worse off than he’d thought. Kurt’s eyes narrowed as if he’d read Sebastian’s mind, and Sebastian had the fearful realization that perhaps he could. There were stories about Anderson’s bloodline, rumors about their power, and had he already not known them to be true feeling it touch him last night would have been enough.

“Mock and sneer all you want Smythe,” Kurt said, “but I don’t need Blaine’s super powers to see that you’re just a scared, angry, little boy who never grew up. Now Blaine and Ian here seem to think you’re too stubborn to do any talking without the right incentive, and I don’t want to watch you or anyone else be tortured… but you came here to kill us. You killed our people and so many others to get to us that I can’t say you wouldn’t deserve it and whatever else came to you. I know you know how to help us prevent more death and I also know what you love…” 

It took a moment for Kurt’s words to sink in and when they did Sebastian was tempted to laugh at him in disbelief. There was no way, just no way that Hummel wasn’t bluffing. He had to be! Right? The longer Kurt stared at him though the less sure he became.

“You’re the one bluffing Sebastian.” Kurt countered. 

“You knew Blaine hadn’t touched him, because you already know what it’s like to feel someone you love being tortured. You might think that whatever sympathy I feel for you would make it impossible for me to hurt you or someone else to get to you…” Kurt’s hands landed softly on Sebastian’s folded legs, the firm grip at odds with the gentle motion he’d used to lay them there and the almost cruel dig of his fingers. Sebastian tried not to be effected by it—because if he was going to have suicidal desire for one of them it wasn’t going to be Hummel—but he was an unattached alpha and challenge was sexy; challenge made him want to bite Kurt and leave marks he’d remember, fuck him into boneless submission. 

Anderson made a sound, a hair rising noise that started deep in his chest and roiled up the back of his throat signaling nothing but imminent pain because—the realization came belated like the ticking of a slow clock— those fingers digging into his thighs and the warm body pressing so close to Sebastian belonged to his mate; and Blaine’s mate courted danger fearlessly, bringing it to Sebastian’s lap with a single touch, a heated glance, and a knowing whisper.

“You don’t know how far I would go to protect what _I_ love. Talk and you won’t find out. That’s the last mercy I’m going to give you. I suggest you take it.”

Sebastian still didn’t know if Hummel was telling the truth or not but the man in front of him was either too damn good an actor or he really meant it because in the end Sebastian couldn’t bring himself to test the steel behind his eyes.

He couldn’t stomach watching Nick face the flame; so which one of them was the weakling really?

~*~*~

Blaine did not wait for Smythe to nod his surrender. It was clear to them all; Blaine’s focus was on Kurt’s hand’s gripping the other Alpha tightly his pale skin contrasting slightly with Sebastian’s darker tone, his enemy’s flesh pressing against the softness of Kurt’s palms… he grabbed Kurt by the back of the wrist, the vise like close of his grip out of balance with the calm and deceptively light tone of his voice as he asked Kurt to step back.

It was his turn now.

Kurt had begged him for the chance to try and talk to Sebastian and Blaine had agreed even though he hadn’t thought there would be any use to it. He’d been wrong about that but that was better in the end. Just because he understood the necessity of violence didn’t mean he sought it and torture wasn’t something he could bring himself to enjoy.

It might have upset Kurt to know but he couldn’t say the thought of hurting Sebastian for the things he’d done bothered him greatly. He was an enemy and his crimes were frankly quite personal. He’d hurt Kurt last night. He was wearing Kurt’s scent now, strongest where Kurt had touched him, and the atrocity of that was something Blaine couldn’t even vocalize. Sebastian was dead meat as far as he was concerned, dead the moment he came after Blaine’s people, and possibly dead, only to be resurrected and subsequently torn into a million bloodied shreds, the moment he’d started smelling like lust under Kurt’s hands.

Wanting his blood felt as natural as wanting to nuzzle up against Kurt, as natural as wanting to push Kurt back into a wall and fuck him senseless, because as pissed as his little stunt had made him Blaine had to begrudgingly admit that watching him deal with Sebastian so ruthlessly did it for him to a frankly (he was sure Kurt would agree) disturbing degree.

 _“My threatening violence and mayhem turning you on this much would be disturbing by most human standards, yes.”_

Kurt’s thoughts had the nerve to lilt through his head in a gentle tease. 

_“Says the man doing the threatening. You knew what you were doing, Kurt.”_

_“I did. This way nobody had to torture anybody.”_

_“See if your ass agrees with you tomorrow morning and we’ll talk.”_

Kurt’s answering rush of indignation tinged strongly with underling arousal was satisfaction enough and Kurt surely felt Blaine’s smugness because he sent him perhaps the most withering glance anyone had ever achieved.

Blaine resisted the urge to grin and turned his focus back to Smythe who unfortunately didn’t manage to glance quickly enough away from Kurt before Blaine caught it and any amusement Blaine had been feeling quickly vanished. 

“Okay Sebastian, let’s talk. You ready?”

He heard Sebastian’s heart quicken before he smelt the spike of fear, and both were gone with a flash as he stabbed through the burning bright cloud of the other Alpha’s aura and grasped for his core. What he was doing didn’t exactly have a name, it was hard to give a name to what was even harder to describe.

It wasn’t possession, because this kind of access had to be granted willingly, and it wasn’t mind reading because it wasn’t Sebastian’s mind he was reaching for. Blaine was reaching for a part of him without physical form but no less there and far more important than any muscle or bone. 

He could have made it painless but he chose not to; the pain wasn’t anything close to what Sebastian deserved, closer to discomfort than anything severe.

When Blaine touched the soul of Sebastian Smythe he found far more than he was expecting, far more than he’d truly bargained for. There was magic and heat, something wild within him that was neither lycan nor human—old, older than anything Blaine had ever touched— and it ran so deep that it seemed to go on forever.

Blaine had to pull himself away from it, will himself back closer to the surface before that strange ageless magic swallowed him up. He didn’t know how but he knew it could, could feel it grinning at his retreat like a toothy crocodile. 

Closer to the surface there was a familiar wildness, the bright eyes and the penetrating stare of the wolf, accompanied by a thousand ghosts whispering the impressions of thousands of moments lived. Blaine saw it in pieces: small pack wandering the French countryside, a young cub and his mother at play. He saw Sebastian’s father, his uncles cousins and fellow clansmen, their great cruelties and their great loves, the way they fought so staunchly to protect what remained of their lands and their heritage and the way they were hunted. He saw death after death after death. Years of roaming stacked on top of years of bitterness until the memories of love and laughter were so faded Blaine almost mistook them for dreams.

He saw those too, even the ones so fractured they were in shards pricking blood wherever they had happened to fall. 

Blaine back peddled, pulling away from the jagged edges of dreams because there was plenty of danger there too. He needed to focus his search and for this part he would need Sebastian’s help. He was confident that Sebastian would grant it. There was so much of Nick here, whether Sebastian wanted to admit that consciously or not, that Blaine almost felt guilty for using him as leverage. 

“Who is James?” he asked, his voice quiet within the room yet reverberatingly loud between their minds. The memories came even as Sebastian spoke.

He said he didn’t know which was basically true but he knew a lot more than he thought he knew. Blaine saw the seedy bar Sebastian had been in when the stranger first approached him. Tall, hooded and what the hood didn’t hide a wide set of black shades did. He’d been painfully pale looking and danger had oozed from every pore.

He was familiar Blaine realized with dread.

“Where does he come from?”

Another ‘I don’t know’ from Sebastian but once again he had more knowledge than he thought he did.

A flash of pale wrist and fur covered cuff, a ring hanging from a silver chain around a pale neck, a gleeful grin in the dark and manic whispers: _’ You want revenge. I want a crown. How about we make a deal Sebby M’boy…’_

The ring! Where had he seen that serpant before? Focus. Don’t get lost.

“What was the deal?” Blaine demanded.

“He wanted a middle man.” _‘I need a red herring Sebby, someone to do my legwork and keep Anderson nice and distracted…’_ “He wouldn’t risk coming here himself, not at first.”

James had been in Westerville?! Why hadn’t he been scented by any of the patrols?

“He moves like a shadow,” Sebastian answered his thoughts before Blaine had even finished them effectively pulling him from the mind numbing haze of fractured recollections. “He’s a better hunter than me, maybe even you… certainly the strongest vampire I’ve ever encountered. There are legends about him in Europe, they call him The Master because even master vampires like Balaur fear him.”

“How is Balaur involved in this?” Blaine asked, thinking of the assembly of vampires that would arrive the next day.

“I don’t know,” truth, “But he wanted them to blame your mate for all the deaths. He wanted the conclave. He knew you’d invite them here. He seemed to know about you. He guessed what you’d do at every turn and even though I thought he was full of shit at first he was never wrong.”

_‘Forget everything you’ve heard about the Andersons. You don’t even know the half of it. You need someone like me or Blainey boy is going to eat you alive. But don’t take my word for it, pay him a visit. See how far you get. It won’t be far. When he catches you and shows you why he outclasses you by like a million, you can come back to me. Daddy’s always here for you Sebby’_

Blaine saw the woods again. Kurt’s first morning in Westerville. Saw Sebastian lunging at a terrified Kurt saw himself and Wes. He blinked desperately. Focus! Kurt was what he needed to remember. He had to protect Kurt and his family.

“What does he want with Kurt?!” He demanded to know. “Why target his family if he knew I’d invite them in here anyway?”

“Ransom. Kurt’s family for Kurt, those would be the terms. You’d say never. Kurt would come anyway like a good boy, with a little help if needed…” Blaine saw a handsome blond, big smile, kind face in a waiter’s uniform.

_‘Name’s Sam. Kid’s got great blood. You’d appreciate it if you knew how perfect it was.’_

“…he’d demand you bring the crown for Kurt. You’d do it. While you were gone my pack and I, we’d invade your land he’d kill you and take the crown.”

Blaine gritted his teeth, at war with the impulse to attack what wasn’t there, to snarl and bite and punish Sebastian for the things he had planned, for the fear that Blaine could not abate creeping up inside him that it would all still come to pass; that Kurt would be taken from him. But he had to think bigger than that, had to ask the right questions. It only took a little digging to know that Sebastian didn’t know where James had planned on taking Kurt’s family or even the how, just that they would be.

Learning that James wanted the crown wasn’t new but Blaine needed to know how he planned on using it.

“It’s spelled so that only Arthur’s blood can wear it and even then, only he can really use it. How does he plan on getting past that?”

The answer chilled Blaine from the inside out, a chill so powerful it seemed to freeze the entire room. Or maybe it was only him; it was so hard to tell when he did this.

“Magic. He told me not to worry about it, that he knew how to make the crown work for him, that the magic was in the blood. Kurt’s more than bait, he’s part of the spell. You both are.”

_‘All the best magic starts with blood, Sebastian. The best and brightest requires sacrifice.’_

Blaine pulled back from Sebastian with a desperate inhale for air and almost fell. He would have crumpled to the ground if not for Kurt coming quickly to him and holding him up. 

“You shouldn’t have stayed connected so long, Blaine.” Ian was right behind him, his face creased with worry. “You need to get warm, and rather quickly.”

“No no there isn’t time! Santana was right. It’s about Dagan! James has a ring, I saw it—just for a moment but it was there—a serpent, just like the one on Dagan’s wrist.” 

Ian pinned Sebastian with an icy glare and the alpha nodded blankly, still out of sorts and shivering from the soul search.

“Yeah I saw it once or twice… I think. What does it matter?”

Blaine grabbed a hold of Kurt tightly fighting the shivers that were taking over his body and biting out through chattering teeth, “it m-matters because Dagan made that ring for my father!” 

~*~*~

Ian had called it “soul searching” when Kurt asked what Blaine was doing. Apparently it was complicated, risky and draining because questioning Sebastian had taken a lot out of Blaine. When Sebastian admitted that James planed on killing them both as part of some insane magic ritual he shuddered, closed his eyes and stepped away from the seated alpha, swaying as he stepped. Kurt had rushed to steady him, only further alarmed at the ice cold feel of Blaine’s skin under his hands. There was even a tell-tale tinge of blue to his lips.

He hadn’t wanted to go see Quinn after but he’d finally agreed to go at Kurt’s insistence because imminent doom or not Kurt wasn’t about to let him drop dead in the basement of the safe house. For once Ian was in agreement with him about something.

Kurt had no idea whether or not the ring Blaine had seen in Sebastian’s memories was really the one his father had worn, or just one similar as Ian had suggested, but he’d hated seeing Blaine so upset by it. Upset really wasn’t the word, Blaine was nearly manic. Kurt had looked helplessly to Ian and only been more disturbed by the wizard’s expression.

There had been fear there too. Kurt didn’t want to know what could make the Merlin so afraid.

Blaine had gone to the infirmary and Kurt had gone to talk with Lina when Quinn kicked him out for driving her crazy and generally getting in the way. Kurt couldn’t help it, Blaine being hurt made everything feel so off kilter it was absurd. Because frankly there was a shit ton to feel uncertain about, a whole load of things that should have made him feel like tearing his hair out and wailing but he might have been able to put on a brave face so long as he had Blaine beside him. 

Just before Quinn had shooed him out Blaine had grabbed his hand and held it tightly. It was still too cold, still trembling with shivers but Blaine’s grip had been firm. He’d stared so insistently into Kurt’s eyes, so determinedly, that Kurt hadn’t doubted him at all when he rasped through a tight throat, “We’ll save them. They are no us to him dead and he won’t harm them before he can know for sure that we know he has them. We’ll figure out a way and we’ll do it together okay? Just trust me.”

 _Don’t leave me_ was unspoken, but Kurt heard it anyway. 

Kurt had told him “Always” and had kissed the coolness from his lips, giving him heat, and passion and trust, giving up control without hesitation. There would be no certainty, no assurance in a trade—his life for their lives, his life for his father’s, mother’s, brother’s lives— no control at all in the outcome, just the small hope that fate would be gentle in whatever came, and that whatever he lost he’d survive it. They’d survive anything.

There was a tear or two, wiped quickly from his cheeks, the only evidence of the storm inside. Feelings were funny like that, wrapped up in small spaces and tucked away only to become enormous when unleashed. He could have cried a hurricane if nature would have allowed it and it still wouldn’t have been enough but there was no place for it now. They had to prepare for what was coming.

To start with Blaine had asked him to inform the guard that an alpha wolf by the name Sam Evans was allowed nowhere within the vicinity of the forest and if found was to be brought immediately to either him or Ian for questioning. 

Something about that name tickled at Kurt’s memory but he didn’t think he’d met anyone in the pack with that name. It wasn’t until he’d gone to fetch Chandler so that they could carry out the rest of Blaine’s instructions (because Blaine insisted he take someone with him and Kurt refused to walk around with a full guard detail when he was only going as far as Lina’s room) that he finally recalled where he’d seen the blond waiter Blaine had plucked from Sebastian’s memory.

_’Hi i’m Sam. I’m not your waiter but I wasn’t about to pass up the chance to meet you.’_

That was the guy James was going to have abduct him if he didn’t agree to the ransom for his family? Had he been working for James even then? Trying to worm his way into Kurt’s affections early? It made him sick, wondering if even then when he’d been closer to death than he ever imagined. 

But something about it didn’t feel right. Sam had seemed sweet, genuinely interested in him and he’d saved Kurt from that creep who had followed him into the bathroom… but maybe that was just so James plan could come to fruition. After all it was hard to use a guy’s mate against him when he hadn’t taken a mate. But how had they even known he and Blaine would end up together at that point? Kurt hadn’t even known.

It was becoming clearer and clearer to Kurt that their enemy must have been watching them for a long time, his knowledge of Kurt and Blaine respectively far too intimate to be coincidence. The danger was far far too close to home, and Kurt had the vague feeling that Blaine knew more than he was admitting.

 _“What is it?”_ he beseeched as he and Chandler walked, knowing that Blaine would hear him. _“We’ve got to trust each other, Blaine, now or never.”_

_“Kurt I… I don’t know. Not for sure.”_

_“But you suspect something. Why not just say it?”_

_“Because what I suspect isn’t possible.”_

Kurt didn’t need him to elaborate the picture that leaked from Blaine’s mind to his were enough.

He saw a small black furred cub that he knew instantly as Blaine running toward three older boys, practically tripping over his own paws to reach them. The older boys were all blonds, except for the youngest of the three. He was a boy of twelve with dark hair and blue eyes that glanced back at the approaching cub with such annoyance it could only be fraternal. 

_“Christian wait! I didn’t get to say goodbye!” Blaine’s childlike please echoed in the memory, squeezing at Kurt’s heartstrings as the vision played on. The oldest scooped the cub up as he nearly went crashing into his feet and held him close, nuzzling his cheeks and nose against the cubs black fur._

_“I was calling for you. How could I leave without saying goodbye to my favorite pup?”_

_“Cooper locked me in the closet! He said I was the reason you were going away.”_

_Christian cocked his head toward Cooper, sightless eyes no match for keen senses and the strength of the bond between the brothers as he drove disapproval into his younger sibling with his stare._

_“You know that’s not true Coop,” Christian admonished. “That was cruel.”_

_Cooper flushed, red with shame, his head dipping momentarily before it snapped back up with defiance._

_“Yeah well, Dad wouldn’t be so pissed off all the time if it wasn’t for the runt here. So it is his fault!”_

_“I’m not a runt!” Blaine immediately protested, yipping and wriggling in Christian’s arms, snapping his toothy gums in Cooper’s direction. “You’re mean and I hate you! I wish it was you who would go away and never come back!”_

_The older boy bared his teeth at his younger sibling in response to the taunt and the middle brother, the only one who hadn’t spoken yet, pulled him back by the arm._

_“Let go of me Conner!” Cooper demanded, tears beginning to brim in his eyes. “It’s him who should go away! He and his stupid mother. You know dad hates both of them. They’re the reason he’s unhappy! He should be with mom and Christian should be Alpha and—”_

_“Mom’s dead Cooper!” Conner shouted over him. “She died and died chose not to follow her.”_

_“For us” Cooper insisted, his voice sounding almost as small and childlike as Blaine’s._

_“Maybe, so” Christian allowed, much gentler than Conner was being. “But he’s not here for us any more Coop, and picking on Blaine isn’t going to change how dad and I feel about each other. I’ve got to go, you know that, and I know that I can count on you three to take care of each other. We’re family. We’re all each other has.”_

_“Then don’t leave,” Cooper pleaded hugging himself tightly and staring at Christian through wide wet eyes. “Don’t leave us here. You’ll leave and you won’t come back just like mom and we’ll be alone here. Please Christian, please don’t leave. I don’t want to be alone.”_

The memory faded.

Kurt’s eyes felt dry, so dry that they stung something fierce. It wasn’t until he tried to blink the sensation away that he realized they weren’t dry at all, that the stinging pain was unshed tears. 

~*~*~*~  
 _Dublin Ohio_

Cooper Jay Anderson stood alone on the Chang’s terrace sipping idly from a steaming mug as he watched the last of the preparations being made for the journey to Westerville. He held a nondescript looking cellphone in the other hand, plain except for the initials D.T. carved into the back, not exactly his style but that’s what you got for buying second hand.

It vibrated and lit up with another incoming text and Cooper made a face at it.

More of Jesse’s histrionics no doubt. They’d lost the step family and St. James seemed convinced the father wouldn’t be enough leverage. Showed what he knew about boys and their father’s didn’t it?

He glanced to the cuff on his wrist, the fur moved ever so slightly by the late morning breeze and his frown turned up into a grin. 

Little boys will go an awfully long way for daddy. He trusted it. He knew. 

“And even if Hummel proves to be a terrible son I’ve got a little surprise all set up for him and Blainey,” he murmured to himself as he took another long sip from his mug. Jesse’s grail brew always left his lips stinging after each swallow but flushed him with pleasant warmth. Things were fine. Soon they would be better than fine. Soon everything would be right again and the only people who would suffer were of course everyone that he felt deserved it. 

So many people deserved a long terrible death. Blaine first: he’d killed daddy after all. Balaur second: because he was so fond of making boys motherless. Smythe third: because he shared the same affliction.

So soon now. And what a pleasant thought it was! Enough to make a guy sing. That’s what Blaine had always wanted to do, when things were bad and no amount of telling him to man up would do the trick. He’d always wanted to sing those silly songs from the movie about the lions.

He hadn’t hated that as much as he’d pretended, or Blaine for that matter, but that was his mistake. If he’d have known what Blaine would take from him he’d have cut him from his bitch mother’s belly. But no matter, it was only a matter of time before the wrongs were righted.

Cooper reached into his pocket and pulled out the grainy picture that Sebastian had taken for him of a young woman watering a potted plant on her doorstep, her face mostly obscured by the fall of her long dark hair.

Time had changed her. _He_ had changed her, and if he could impress how sorry he was for that through space and time through the touch of his fingers to the wrinkled surface of the photo, he would have.

It’ll be right soon. She’ll forgive you and everything will be right again.

He put the photo away, humming softly under his breath to ease the ache that had opened up in his chest. Old habits died hard it seemed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEWS & THANKS: *peeks out behind hands* Okay how many saw it coming? lol I want to know because you have no idea the balance I had weaving in clues, but trying not to actually give it away. I'm not sure I succeeded but I gave it the college try. And now that I can I just want to point out that Cooper killed a man in a dress and it was very serious. Andy and I had a cackle over that little trick.
> 
> On a more serious note I wanted to let you all know that there are some pretty serious things happening in my life right now. A close family friend has cancer which has taken a turn for no return and the company I work for decided it was a perfect time to go under. It has been a hard couple of weeks but I wanted to let you know that I am in a good place and that I appreciate all of you so much. Coming back to your comments here and getting your thoughts in my ask box on tumblr is always a bit of sunshine in my day. I will do my level best to get the last two chapters to you as quickly as possible but in the event that I'm not able I will keep you as best informed as I can as to when to expect an update. As always, keep well and happy reading.


	33. Chapter 31: Brotherhood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **INDIVIDUAL CHAPTER WARNING:** This chapter includes discussion of the abduction and torture of minors and some graphic descriptions that may be triggers. Please read with care and as always you can contact me for further details.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are exactly four versions of this chapter on my hard drive. I’ve spent so long reworking and reworking it that I have basically decided it will never be posted if I don’t hold an intervention with myself. So I chose the version I liked best and here it is, hopefully to be enjoyed. You guys have been waiting an awfully long time and for those of you still hanging in there I just want to take this time to say that you have my love, and my honest devotion. Because busy as my schedule is right now you are what I think about at the end of each week and why I squeeze in writing time each day. You have my solemn vow this story WILL be finished.
> 
> Now, there were some obvious issues that I ran into with this chapter, one of them being that when I did my chapter planning I got carried away and put a bunch of plot points in a box and thought “yeah that will all fit”. I was incorrect and overestimated my long windedness, lol. So incorrect that I am faced now with possibly adding another chapter to fit in everything I had planned which I hope to avoid but I’ll know for sure when I start rearranging things for next chapter.
> 
> To hopefully avoid that (because we’re soooo close) I purposefully cut out the sexy times in this chapter. Le GASP I know. Yes, there were three scenes following where I ended here, one with Lina and Ian, one with Adam and Chandler and one of course starring our star couple (my favorite of the trio). I refuse to lose those scenes because I am stubborn and I do believe they add something to the story even if it can stand to lose it from a critical sense, so I will be posting another interlude in-between this chapter and next.
> 
> For those of you who haven’t seen it I posted one last month which can be found [HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1684841)
> 
> WHOO. All that said, happy reading.

“Stevie!” Sam woke with a start, sitting up in his infirmary bed as a young woman with a bouncing blond ponytail launched herself across his knees. He heard approaching footsteps stop outside the curtain walls of his room, but whoever they belonged to they didn’t enter and his attention was stolen by the woman in his arms and the unmistakable scent she carried of belonging.

Stacey Evans smelled like home. Sam clutched his younger sister to himself tightly and buried his nose against her neck, shuddering as he choked back the overwhelming urge to sob. She held on tightly, not feeling as small or as thin in his arms as she should. Stevie’s smaller, leaner, body was much closer in size to his twins than Sam’s rightful one.

“You went away,” Stacey cried into his shoulder. “I started screaming. Madame Gorski had to dominate me.”

Sam froze. He hadn’t imagined it then. Stevie was truly gone. Pain splintered through Sam and this time the sob that swelled up in his chest broke free. It almost felt like an invisible hand was carving him inside out, pushing his heart up through his throat and squeezing it past his gritted teeth. His brother was dead and for some reason Jesse had trapped Sam in Stevie’s form. It couldn’t mean anything good and he knew he had to find a way to stop whatever Jesse had planned.

But just like in the diner with Mercedes the magic prevented him from telling Stacey who he really was. Still there was doubt and fear in her eyes when he looked at her. She was Stevie’s twin. She’d know better than anyone when he was hurt. Her eyes and her nose were telling her one thing, but her heart would surely be telling her another.

“Stevie?” She questioned, eyeing his sweating brow and straining face with trepidation.

There had to be some way to warn her, but the more Sam strained to get the words out the dizzier and more exhausted he became. Just when he thought he might pass out his body tightened and that strange grip that had forced him to take his brothers shape had a hold of him again.

Sam did the only thing the magic would let him do. He put a hand to Stacey’s head and ran it through her hair, petting her gently as he reminded her that he was there now, and that everything was going to be alright. It was what Sam would have said if he could hold her like her big brother. It burned knowing that the only reason he was allowed to say it was because it was also something Stevie might have said. 

At that moment his ears picked up the sound of raised voices- a man and a woman were whispering urgently to each other outside the curtain, and he remembered then that Stacey had not been alone when she’d approached. He focused on them just in time to catch the end of a conversation.

“… I thought it likely too that whoever attacked him also killed the omega but we’ve done a head count and Elise says all of her omegas are accounted for.” The speaker was a woman, and Sam recognized her voice as belonging to the pretty doctor who he’d met when he’d first woken to find himself in Anderson’s house.

“So it wasn’t one of ours?” a male’s voice murmured in reply. “That explains why Blaine didn’t sense the attack.”

“We can’t be sure that’s the reason. Kurt was in heat. You know that muddles things. He didn’t feel Steven getting attacked either and Stacey felt it as soon as it happened. She thought he’d died Wes. I think our first priority should be going to get the body and identifying—”

“Quinn, it’s out of the question! No one is to go back into town, on Blaine’s orders. If there’s no one missing from the school and Elise has all of the omegas accounted for then the body is the least of our concerns right now.”

“But Jeff said the body was wearing a house omega uniform,” Quinn insisted and there was a long beat where her male companion did not reply.

Finally Sam heard him admit, “It’s strange I agree, but uniforms can be stolen. Maybe the MacTere had plans to sneak one of their own inside our walls? It’s hard to say Quinn, but it doesn’t matter now. Their plan failed. Whatever it was and whatever poor sod they killed we don’t have time to worry about it. Our people are all accounted for and our priority has to be keeping them safe. No one is to leave, even you.”

Dr. Quinn appeared a moment later with a shove of the curtains, bringing with her a wave of restless energy and discontent. Her heels were sharp on the floor as she strode to Sam’s bedside, efficiently checking his vitals and pointedly ignoring the man who followed behind her.

Sam recognized him as Wes, Blaine’s Beta wolf, and he swallowed thickly as Wes pinned him with an intent stare. The beta wolf kept his voice gentle as he approached, keeping his arms straight at his side and his palms outward. Sam blinked in surprise when he realized Wes was coming toward him like an alpha who did not want to spook a nervous omega. Like he would have if it really was Stevie in this bed and Sam was coming to question him about what happened. It was so weird to be on the receiving end of it.

Wes questioned him about being attacked and Sam tried to tell the truth, he really did, but every time he opened his mouth that strange power took ahold again, as if he was a puppet and someone were pulling his strings.

He told Wes he had no idea who’d attacked him, an alpha and not a scent he’d recognized at the time. When Wes asked him if he thought he’d be able to identify the scent of his attacker if he smelled it again, he had a mild panic attack that both Wes and Quinn attributed to be a natural result of omega nerves and a fear of facing the trauma he’d been through. They both agreed the subject could be dropped for the time being.

“Well, the good news is you’re in good health. No lasting damage,” Quinn assured him with a consoling smile as she performed her last check. “Your memories I’m sure will come in their own time, and I highly suggest you have someone you can talk to when you start to remember things. I know omegas don’t particularly like sitting around without purpose but I’m sending Stacey with instructions that you’re only to be on light duty for the time being.”

Sam didn’t know that much about Westerville’s pack structure but he knew enough from the twin’s occasional letters to figure out that most likely he’d be sent to the main house to help with the house staff. It made sense considering the main house was both the safest place in the forest and would allow Stevie to be close to his twin while he recovered.

But Stevie was dead, and Sam forced to be here in his place and Sam couldn’t shake the dark worry that at the main house was exactly where Jesse had wanted Sam to be.

~*~*~* ~

_During the days of Kings Rain, when men fought for the right to call themselves king over vanquished Uther’s seven kingdoms, Arthur had lived with his Grandmother in Fir Rois of the Northern Ui Nell. Their village saw many refugees, cast from their homes by the continuing war and strife, and though it was perhaps unwise in such times of unrest grandmother was known to lend her gifts and the mercy of her table to any stranger in need. And so it was that Arthur came to make many strange acquaintances in those years._

_The night that Sir Devon of Benoic came to Grandmother’s hut was quiet and stormy, the rain a steady drumming outside as moisture dripped steadily from whatever crack could be found for the rain to roll into. Arthur, only in his fifth summer, lay huddled on his cot near the fire pit wrapped tight in Grandmother’s wools watching the fire smoke and sputter as rain dripped down through the opening in the thatch roof and dinner bubbled in Grandmother’s best cauldron._

_“What villainy!” Grandmother cursed as she stirred their dinner. “I’ll have that old wizards hide for this, mark my words Arthur. Aye, I’m about fed up now. Two moons ago he promised he’d talk to his lordship about this leaky roof. It’s fine enough for an old crone like me, but a wee boy?”_

_She cast a worried eye in Arthur’s direction and the boy straightened up, offering the old woman a brave smile that belied his dampened clothing and shivers. Arthur did not like to cause Grandmother worry, and five summers was old enough not to be laid low by a little rain._

_“Bah” Grandmother scoffed, knowing Arthur’s mind without need for speech. “I suppose you think stone walls and thick furs are above you?” She pointed suddenly with the wooden spoon she held, accentuating each word with a forceful thrust like a Knight with a sword. “Well you listen to me Arthur Mac Murchadha, ‘Cause I could tell ye a thing or two about his lordship. It’s a sin to treat your flesh and blood this way. He ought to be ashamed. Your lady mother would be sick to death if she could see the state of you. She’d tell Theon Mac Murchadha what was what. The gall of him. And a minor baron too!”_

_Arthur grinned but said nothing, wrapping himself tighter in the damp wool blankets. He was used to Grandmothers tirades, and though he often did, he had not the energy that night to beg her for stories about the mother he’d never known or the father whom she refused to speak of. Though Grandmother could not seem to help speaking on his mother, whom she had helped to bring into the world and served as a nurse-mother for, she refused to tell him which ladies of the noble house Mac Murchadha she was and which of the lords was his sire._

_It was well known that he belonged to one of them and that Lord Theon saw to his upkeep. He had provided grandmother with their little hut and paid her for her services as a teacher for his young children. Either it was because someone else in the family had bade him do it, or because Theon himself was his sire and the villagers were fond of speculating which it was. Arthur was fond of neither Lord Theon nor his children and he fervently hoped that the sour faced lord who always looked at him as if he were something pungent dragged onto the floors was not indeed the man who had sired him._

_“I like the rain Grandmother” he assured her. “It is no bother to me.”_

_It was not entirely an untruth. Most boys did not like rain for it made their labors more difficult and meant long hours cold and cramped indoors. For Arthur it meant freedom for it was one of the few times safe enough for him to take his wolf shape and venture out in daylight. The wolf was not overly fond of the rain either but so rare were its chances to roam that whenever it rained Arthur happily spent hours romping about in the wood, his thick fur and hearty constitution protection enough from the elements._

_“Bah” she muttered beneath her breath in reply. “It isn’t decent.”_

_Grandmother spooned the thick steaming stew into two crude wooden bowls and she joined Arthur on his cot. They asked God to bless their meal- grandmother was always insistent on that- and she thanked him that no great ill had fallen on Arthur during his time in the woods that day and prayed for his continued protection._

_They had just barely tucked into their meal when the knocking came at the door._

_~*~_

_Their visitors that night were a Frankish knight and his page boy, the both of them shivering and travel worn in mud splattered clothing, soaked to the bone._

_“Good Woman, I am Sir Devon. The boy’s name is Lott. We were told at the inn that we might find shelter here” the traveling knight said when Grandmother had opened the door to him. “I pray it is so, for I am afraid the boy here does not fare well.”_

_Arthur tore his eyes long enough away from the imposing figure of the man at their door to look at the boy at his side. He was older than Arthur by several summers but he looked smaller than he was in his sodden garments, his black curls plastered to his sallow brow and weaving where he stood braced against Sir Devon. Arthur’s eyes widened when he noticed the long thin cut on the older boy’s brow, and the blood that was flowing freely from the wound._

_Grandmother, never one to turn from the injured, clucked her tongue empathetically at the miserable looking pair and quickly ushered them inside._

_“Poor lamb, come sit by the fire. Arthur, remove those wet blankets and fetch the ones I set to dry.”_

_Arthur obeyed her quickly snapped orders, fetching the long lengths of wool Grandmother had hung near the fire and handing them to the old woman who took them with a grateful nod._

_“There’s a good boy. Sir Devon, have a seat near the fire and warm yourself. Arthur, take his clothes and hang them up. When you’ve done with that get the poor man some of that stew in the pot, there’s a dove.”_

_As Arthur rushed about seeing to her wishes Grandmother stripped the wounded boy of his clothing, all the while clucking her tongue and murmuring to him in her motherly fashion. Even still, the boy looked confused by his surroundings, eyeing her with fearful suspicion. When she made to strip him of his trousers he made a terrified sound of protest and gripped her arms with surprisingly strong hands for a youth so skinny._

_“Easy now, you’ll catch your death in these drenched things” Grandmother tried to explain but the shivering youth was not appeased._

_He was only soothed when Sir Devon came to his side and placed a hand on his shoulder, whispering to him quietly._

_“It’s alright Lancelot,” he murmured the words quietly in the boys ear, too quietly surely to be heard by Grandmother but Arthur’s ears were like his wolves and therefor uncommonly good. “No ill will befall you, I vow. Let this kind woman see to your wounds.”_

_Lancelot- for that surely was his name despite what sir Devon had told Grandmother at the door- eased in the older man’s hold, closing his eyes while his body continued to shake with shivers._

_~*~_

_Long after Grandmother had seen to Lancelot’s head and their guests had been fed, Grandmother sat them comfortably together on Arthur’s cot to dry with her mulled mead to warm their bellies. Arthur watched them as they drank, his head bursting with questions._

_Why did Sir Devon call Lancelot, Lott, instead of his given name? How had the boy been injured and where were they headed? He decided that it was politest, not to mention smartest, to begin with a query that could be excused away by simple good manners and asked the other boy where he hailed from._

_Lancelot looked at him with dull eyes and did not answer, looking to Sir Devon instead._

_Some of their visitors reacted suspiciously to his curiosity, but Sir Devon only considered him with a thoughtful stare before he relented and began to tell his curious hosts of their origins. They both hailed from the kingdom of Benoic, Sir Devon having spent many of the past years in the service of Liban de Benoic, King over that land. According to Sir Devon King Liban had been a great man. He with the aid of his brother Duke Bors had kept the kingdom prosperous while under the shadow of Mad King Uther for countless years._

_“But the Mad King’s death has cast the seven lands into chaos. His madness has crept into the minds of the lesser kings, made them greedy for what is not theirs,” Sir Devon remarked bitterly into his cups, taking a shallow swig. “King Claudas is the worst of them all. After Uther laid waste to so much of his land during his rule, Claudas has been hungry to take all of Brittany and Britain combined. He’ll take the Mad Wolf’s throne and make all the kingdoms pay homage to him if he can. Benoic stood in his way. The devil amassed an army and laid siege. We were overcome and our enemy spared no man woman or child. Lott here lost his entire family, as did I.”_

_Grandmother breathed in sharply before questioning, “your King? Is there any chance he might…” but Sir Devon only shook his head, his expression ever darkening. On the cot next to him Lancelot stiffened._

_“My lord and lady were killed, as was Duke Bors.” Sir Devon explained. “Their children were taken into captivity. Claudas knows the people won’t revolt so long as he holds the true heirs to the kingdom hostage. They are the hope for the future, but so long as they remain in his hands it’s a very dim hope indeed.”_

_The knight’s eyes glittered coldly with rage as silence fell. He raised his cup but did not drink; staring moodily into the mead instead and a shiver went down Arthur’s spine. He looked to Grandmother whose lips were thin and white as she gazed into the fire._

_“Saints preserve us from the deeds of wicked men. Nothing good comes of the lust for power,” she lamented, her frail hand covering Arthur’s._

_“Is that why you are running?” Arthur asked quietly and when Sir Devon raised his head with a jerk to glare at him in outrage Arthur fought the urge to shrink._

_“Running?” Sir Devon questioned with barely suppressed anger._

_“Aye. You are here, miles from your land, alone, so you must be running away. Why? Your king fell, but you are a knight sir, you swore an oath.”_

_“And what does a boy of four know of oaths?!” Sir Devon demanded and Arthur bristled._

_“What about your people? What about the children of your king? Will you just abandon them in their time of need?”_

_Arthur was only a boy- of five mind you- but even he knew it was disgraceful for a knight to flee the realm when it was being held by an usurper king and the children of his royal house held as captives._

_“Hush! What do you know of it?” Grandmother scolded, shaking his arm harshly. “Forgive the boy, Sir Devon. He’s been taught better than to speak out of turn.”_

_Sir Devon stood suddenly to speak, his eyes brimming with something volatile that made Arthur fear he would attempt to strike one of them, when a quiet, and until then unheard voice, stopped him with a gentle no._

_Arthur looked to Lancelot whose voice was still small and sweet with youth but bore far too much sadness._

_“He has the right of it doesn’t he? You are running, leaving everyone behind you to suffer. There is little use in denying your cowardice.”_

_The small page boy’s face was so laden with guilt that Arthur did not think for a moment that it was truly Sir Devon he was accusing, and Sir Devon himself quickly forgot his anger and gripped the thin youth’s shoulder with the tenderness of familiarity and long practice._

_“I made a promise to your lady mother that I would see you away from that place. We both know there is nothing but death for you there. Would you break her heart and die for nothing?”_

_Man and boy stared at each other for a long moment before Lancelot murmured almost too quietly to be heard by normal ears._

_“No, but I would rather have died for honor.”_

_Arthur watched as the other boy swallowed thickly, blinking back tears he stubbornly refused to shed. He felt sorry then for the things he had said, for putting such shame and sadness in the other boy’s eyes._

_“Aye, because there is honor in the needless death of a boy of ten,” Sir Devon scoffed. He squeezed Lancelot’s shoulder again and said, “It is not cowardly to live to fight another day.”_

_Arthur could tell that Lancelot did not believe the words the older man uttered._

__“You are no coward, truly I am sorry I thought it. I never knew my mother, though Grandmother has sworn she loved me greatly, and for that I miss her terribly. I imagine your pain must be great- greater even than mine- having known her; but if her wish was for you to live then you must live and believe there is no shame in it. You cannot find justice for her or anyone else if you are dead, however noble the death.”_ _

_Arthur often felt very strongly, and when he felt strongly and thought very deeply, sometimes his thoughts had a way of finding their way into the heads of those he was thinking about. It had happened more often when he was smaller, smaller even than he was now, but Grandmother had gripped his face tightly and shook him until he cried and warned him never ever to think that hard again._

_It was the devils work and someone would figure out that he had a demon living inside him and then he would be stoned or worse._

_So he did not realize he’d made a mistake until he heard Lancelot quietly thank him. The other boy’s eyes were no longer dull and lifeless but bright and focused as they stared intently at Arthur. Arthur’s own eyes widened with terror, his heart beginning to pound with fear, but neither Grandmother nor Sir Devon made any tell that they might have heard him and Lancelot did nothing more than grip Sir Devon’s hand and mutter another quiet thank you, as if Arthur hadn’t said anything at all._

_As it was, Arthur would wonder for many weeks after that whether he’d actually spoken to Lancelot or not. He would remember the strange encounter for years to come just the same. When his journeys as a young king led him to an unfortunate encounter with a giant he was saved by a white clad knight who went by ‘Lancelot of the Lake’. Kay did not trust a man without family or land behind him but Arthur could not help but trust him, for he felt as if he had known him the entirety of his life- this life and the last and every life to come._

_The battles fought together made them as brothers, and one night over the fires Lancelot Dulac confessed that he had been born Lancelot du Benoic, second son of Liban king over those lands. There was an usurper king ruling over those lands now- his siblings and cousins captive if they lived at all and their parents long dead. When the battle for Benoic had turned ill his mother had bid his knight master to make off with him, for he had been only a boy at the time and she had felt that there was hope in the thought that one of her sons might live to restore their home should the rest of them perish._

_“For a long time I was angry, with her for sending me away and with myself for running,” Lancelot confessed that night. He looked to Arthur then, with a slight smile on his handsome face and further confessed, “But a wise boy once reminded me that life was a gift, and that death, however nobly I came by it, would not bring my family justice.”_

_“Aye,” Arthur agreed. “And reclaiming your family land would be a mad endeavor. Only a mad man would attempt it. You Lancelot would never follow a mad king.”_

_“Nay, I wouldn’t” Lancelot laughed in agreement, tossing more wood to the fire. “But as for that boy. I would follow him I think. Aye, I’d follow him anywhere.”_

_Arthur nodded gravely, humbled by the older knights regard and resolved that he could not rest until Benoic’s rightful king sat upon its throne and justice met-mad endeavor or nay._

_The battle was glorious. Lancelot, with the aide of his friend Arthur chased Claudas all the way to his strong hold the castle called Dolorous Garde. It was there that Lancelot battled the enchantment protecting that dark king and all his land, and that Claudas met his death._

_Lancelot freed that day his sister lady Liadan, his cousins Lionel and Bors, and his aunt the Lady Basina. Arthur would have crowned him king over Benoic as well as the lands of Claudas, as they had come to learn that his elder brother Hector had perished at the hands of Claudas shortly after the start of his captivity, but Lancelot begged the crown of Benoic go to his cousin Lionel for he had no wish to be a king. He asked to be given only the castle- which he would restore and come to call Joyous- and its surrounding lands, as well as a place by Arthur’s side for himself and his younger cousin Bors._

_So the people would remember that Lancelot was named lord over Joyous Garde, and Lionel du Benoic became king over Benoic and gladly swore allegiance to Arthur, rightful heir of the high throne._

_Sirs Lancelot and Bors served Arthur faithfully for many years but Lancelot’s affair with Arthur’s wife would forever rend the union of their families, forcing each to decide whether they would honor their vows to a king, or the leanings of the heart._

_And so it was with much regret between them that Lionel king of Benoic, Sir Bors the younger and Sir Lancelot Dulac went to war with Arthur: brother fighting brother._

~*~*~*~*~

All night the air had been full of the sounds of sirens and howls and Brittany replayed the last words she’d said to Santana before she’d departed, fearing that whatever terrors she’d gone to battle in the night would swallow her. The vampiress knew better than most how real a nightmare could become, and how much stronger they were than mortal beings. She shouldn’t have let Santana go alone. She should have held her temper and not said the cruel things she’d said. Those words, even if true, had made her friend sad and Santana carried too much sadness as it was. Adding to it wasn’t what Brittany wanted, but somehow it had happened anyway.

The truth was Brittany could have helped even if she couldn’t kill. She wasn’t a child, but sometimes Santana looked at her as if she were just as small and easily broken as one. She wasn’t, and she didn’t like how waiting made her stomach fill with rocks. Brittany didn’t remember swallowing any but she still felt them there, heavy and cold in her gut as the hours ticked by.

Penny tried to make her feel better by bringing her tea and warm blankets to keep her covered during her watch but Brittany hadn’t wanted any of those things: just Santana.

When she’d finally returned the lycan woman had slipped through Penny’s backdoor silent as a ghost, her hair in tangles around her face and her gleaming skin streaked with dirt and dried blood that made her look rusted and bronze.

It made Brittany think of statues, like the ones she’d see sometimes in the city- the ones of frozen forms that always made her think of curses and witches. She bit her lip, the edge of a sharp canine stinging the flesh as her body vibrated with a shudder.

Neither of them wanted to speak, but they had to eventually. Santana was the braver one this time around.

“He’ll see you.”

Santana sounded like pipes riddled with holes, her voice airy with momentum lost. Brittany thought of paper wetted and wrung and wondered if you could untwist a person as easily as you twisted them, lay them out flat and smooth away their wrinkles. She wanted to try, but she knew that Santana would never let her.

Still, she reached. She hoped for the small mercy of touch, the lightest form of forgiveness, and when Santana did not back away she held on tight and breathed for the first time in hours.

All night she dreamed of her Sire and the Enchanted Forest.

In the morning she woke to Santana’s startled shout, but it wasn’t her Sire come to get her like she’d dreamed. It was only the Alpha Anderson instructing her to come quickly. Santana grumbled about the rude wakeup call and wanting Anderson to stay out of her head but she got them moving just the same. There was no more time to waste.

~*~*~*~ 

_Since the fall of King Liban the forest of Brocéliande had been shrouded in a deep winter. Though it was high summer outside the witches’ forest, inside the wood it was still and dark, the cold biting at the bones of the few brave enough to venture within. Morgana was one such brave soul, though she was only a girl of six and a slip of a girl at that. Her booted feet were swift in the freshly fallen snow and her thin cloak whipped about her as she darted between the trees running toward the heart of the forest._

_Those that still remembered the old gods remembered that Brocéliande was said to sit on the crack between this world and the next, that an unwary traveler could wander into the mist and as likely find themselves swallowed by some beastly creature of magic as he could wander upon the shores of Avalon._

_Deep in the wood there was rumored to be a lake and it was said that the lake itself was the veil between this land and that other, the one mortal men dared not roam. The guardian of that lake had been called many things by many men. To some the lady of the lake was a goddess, and to others she was a water spirit, and by a wise old few she was taken as one of the _medbs_ , the queens of old who were the mothers of magic. To a select few she was simply known as Nimue._

_Nimue was not a melancholy creature at heart but a great sadness had overcome her at the death of King Liban and his wife Sabe, for Queen Sabe had once been a student of hers, just as her father before her. Perched as she was on the border of the world of men Nimue had the often lonely and thankless task to monitor Ian’s efforts to secure stability in the mortal realm and above all secure and preserve the secrets of Avalon._

_She had been Ian’s teacher once, then his lover, and when he had left Avalon to secure the future of men he had left her alone with only the memory of love to invoke summer in her heart. She could not say it was wise of him to spread his seed amongst mortals, but wise or not she had foreseen that children of magic would come and she had advised him that when they did he was to send the strongest of them to her for teaching._

_Morgana was one such child. Her mother was an ordinary bar maid, a dull and frightfully unimaginative woman. She hadn’t even been able to imagine up a proper lie when she’d found herself pregnant and consequently had been shunned by their entire village. Her father was none other than the great wizard himself and Morgana had never been more relieved to learn it, the day not too long ago when Ian had shown up at the inn and asked to see her._

_Everyone in the village called her a witch, when they weren’t cursing her for being a bastard, but Morgana paid them no mind. Who wanted to be boring and ordinary anyway? Other boys and girls might have parents that loved them and might not get whispered about wherever they went but they did not have magic, and they could not say that they had met the Lady of The Lake, now could they?_

_By the time she reached the edge of the lake her breath came in great pants, streaming from her mouth in pale streams to form great clouds. She looked out over the grey water. The opposite end of the shore usually veiled by mist was these days instead obscured by thickly falling snow snow. Quickly she bent to remove her leather boots, her hands shaking more from excitement than from the cold. She threw the sodden boots aside, and without further hesitation stepped into the water at the lakes edge._

_A horrible chill swept up her legs and over her body as she waded into the water but she ignored it, willing warmth back into her limbs the way Nimue had taught her, and coming to a stop once the icy water had climbed up to her waist._

_There in the water she waited until finally after what seemed an age an empty boat floated from out of the seamless wall of white._

~*~*~*~

Lina waited for Blaine to be ready quietly, her somber expression betraying none of the dread that she felt. Kurt had informed her that Blaine wished to question her about James again and then privately- wary of Chandler at his elbow-he’d informed her that Blaine thought that there was a connection between James and Cooper, the brother he had thought dead.

It would mean terrible things if Blaine’s fears were true. The land was ruled by Anderson blood and that meant James if he was truly an Anderson heir had power here as well- in fact, he alone had the power to contest Blaine’s hold on it as Alpha.

But no, she caught herself. That was not quite true either. She looked toward the study door, checking for herself that Benito was still close. He was still playing outside in the hall, watched closely by Chandler. Even assured of his safety Lina could not quite repress a shiver.

If James was really Cooper it meant that her son was an Anderson heir as well. That more than anything was the reason for the cold and empty feeling gripping her chest.

It seemed that no matter what she did to protect him Benito would always be hunted, always be hated by one faction or another; whether it was by the grandfather who thought him an abomination or the wolves who would fear and revile the man who had sired him. There would be no escaping contempt for him, she knew.

“Lina?” Kurt’s voice brought her out of her dark musings. He was still standing beside Blaine who was in quiet discussion with Ian and Wes. He was visibly tense, his aura distressingly dark and troubled.

Kurt laid a hand on Blaine’s thigh and the gesture seemed to sooth him some, dampening the restless energy roiling almost visibly beneath the Alpha’s skin. Blaine’s hand reach to cover Kurt’s where it rested on his flesh even though he did not turn from his conversation with the Merlin and his Beta. It made some small warmth blossom inside of Lina to witness. To have a mate was a lovely thing. She’d not truly understood until she’d met James. She still remembered when such simple lovely things like that had been common between them.

_James brushed a tendril of her dark hair off her cheek, tucking it behind the shell of her ear and smiled down at her. “And how are you today Pretty Girl?”_

Lina blinked, willing the memories away as Kurt called her name again softly, sympathetically.

“Is there anything else you can tell us about James?” Blaine asked. “Anything at all that might help us know for certain who he is or what he might be planning?”

Lina shook her head sadly and murmured in reply, “he talked very little about himself. That was common among members of the resistance.”

They all looked disappointed. Lina bit her lip, searching her memory for anything that might be useful. She felt so useless to them, helpless to prevent any of the doom that was creeping toward them. Still she tried.

“We had a game...” When she saw the others brightening with hope she hastened to add, “It was a silly thing... He’d allow me three questions and the rules were he had to answer them so long as he didn’t tell a lie. At the time they felt like treasures, but I’m not sure if the little truths he granted me would tell you whether or not what you suspect is true. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Lina” Kurt assured her when she’d fallen quiet again. He looked momentarily at Blaine, sharing private thoughts, before looking back at her with an encouraging nod. “Just tell us whatever you can.”

Lina tightened her hands into fists, breathing deeply and steadily. She did not know how this would help, nor did she feel at all prepared to dreg up the memories, but she had to do it, for Benito. She tried to tell herself that they were only memories and that they could not harm her. Perhaps she could start with the small things and work her way up.

“James liked long walks in open spaces. He used to say that being cooped up made him nervous, like the walls were closing in on him,” she began slowly, the words thick on her tongue at first but the more she said the quicker the memories came and he easier it became. “He liked to race, wind in his hair and blood in his cheeks and even more than that he liked to win. He pouted something fierce whenever he lost to me- sometimes he hardly seemed a grown man at all, but he’d laugh whenever I called him bambino and when he laughed he made it seem like there was nothing bad in the entire world, nothing that could touch us. And he was as impulsive as he was competitive.

“Once, when he was a small cub, he lost a bet with a friend about how long it’s possible to hold your breath underwater and nearly drowned. Can you imagine? He said his mother would not let him play out of her sight for weeks and he was humiliated.”

Lina glanced hopefully at Blaine just in time to catch Kurt looking at the same moment but though Blaine’s expression had softened some hearing the story there was no hint of recognition on his face.

“It sounds like something Cooper would do,” he admitted, glancing to Ian and Wes who shared tiny if wan grins with him, but Lina knew that none of them were sure and that meant that she had to go on.

“He told me that he loved watching old movies because he used to watch them with his mother when he was young, a rare treat that she reserved just for them and that his brothers could not intrude on. She admitted that she had a crush on James Dean once and that was the reason he chose his code name.”

“Did he tell you anything about her?” Ian asked. “Her name?”

Lina shook her head.

“Not her name no, but we did talk about her often. He always got this look when he spoke about her. I suppose it is why I asked about her so much. He’d been in California before coming to Italy, because she was from there and he’d hoped to find something of hers, or maybe something of himself. He never seemed sure.”

Ian looked sharply at Blaine and Lina felt dread.

“The Alpha’s first mate, before Blaine’s mother, hailed from a pack in California,” Ian explained, presumably for hers and Kurt’s benefit. He couldn’t know that Lina had already heard the stories and had already told them to Kurt.

“Did he tell you anything else about his mother Lina, anything at all?” Blaine asked something desperate in his voice now.

“She had eyes like emeralds and hair spun of gold to hear him talk. It used to irritate me, but he never could help flirting with blonds. They reminded him of her I think. He loved her so deeply…he was always afraid that I’d leave him like she did. I think he missed her more than he knew how to live with. He told me once that he worried that he was too damaged to love but that I made him feel whole again.”

Overwhelmed by the sudden ache of longing blooming in the center of her chest Lina pushed the recollections away, drowning out the memories of whispered confessions in the dark and the slide of her skin against his. She blinked away the prick of tears as the smile she did not remember forming slid from her face.

Blaine was stiff; a haunted look on his face, and Lina did not have to ask what it was in particular that had confirmed his suspicion. She’d known somewhere inside that they would find something the moment Kurt had told her of Blaine’s worries. 

She had always felt so safe here and so connected to Blaine and he had felt it in return. He’d made her and Benito _his_ without fully understanding why. His brother was that reason. She was Blaine’s kin by bond and what the man could not know the wolf had recognized.

It felt almost as marvelous as it did tragic; because she could feel the brush of Blaine’s deep sorrow, the even deeper anguish he felt as his eyes took her in as if seeing her for the first time, his gaze lingering on the wicked scars James had left upon her throat when he’d stolen her life from her.

“God…” Wes sighed, running a restless hand through his hair. “It’s really him.”

It was strange to think of her James as Cooper, the lost brother she’d heard whispered stories about, but in that moment Lina wanted to tell Blaine everything, to erase that tortured look from his eyes and make him understand that his brother was not the monster he obviously thought he was. Maybe that was just her weakness. Maybe it would always be hers because some part of her would always love James, mad or not.

The words came in a rush, wrested from her like pleas.

“His favorite color is blue and he loves pasta.”

They were all staring at her now like she was crazy but she ignored them.

“He treats it like a delicacy. I would tease him that it was fate falling in love with an Italian woman, with an appetite for it like that. He’ll truly eat anything. He used to eat Chef Boyardee straight from the can just to drive me crazy. He liked making me laugh. He said making me happy made sense. He’d been alone for so long I think that all he wanted in the world was a family.” She wrung her hands remembering all too starkly the sorrow that had always clung to him.

“He said he wanted twenty kids: Ten boys to be the bravest and best just like him and ten girls just like me. I’d have given them to him once. I loved him, even if he was broken… and he loved me.”

Her throat tightening Lina paused, reaching a hand to touch the leathery outlines of the raised scars that marred the flesh there and swallowed. Kurt was looking at her strangely, something too close too piteously for comfort, and she rebelled, raising her chin proudly to meet the stares of the men in the room.

“I am the daughter of a family that has committed more genocides than any other in history. He told me that my father killed someone he loved and I had no reason not to believe him. Don’t you see it was Christian he came for? My father skinned him and hung his pelt upon his wall and even knowing who I was, he loved me.”

“Lina, look what he did to you,” Blaine insisted quietly but she would have none of it. She had to make him understand.

“He tried to protect me! All those times he had to leave the city, when the craving for blood would overcome him. It was I who insisted on going with him when he came to tell me he had to leave for good. He knew the madness would take him eventually and he tried to spare me that. What was that if not love?”

When Blaine did not answer she narrowed her eyes into slits and hissed through her gritted teeth, “Do not look at me like I am still that girl being ravaged by a monster. I define these scars. Don’t you dare let them define me!”

“Lina that’s not-” Kurt began but she did not let him finish.

“It is. It was my heart to give, and I gave it gladly. I’m not ashamed of that even with all the ill it wrought. I have Benito to think of and I can’t regret that. He will one day need answers for all of this.”

She strode over to Blaine, his eyes widening as she grasped his hands in hers and held on tightly and begged him to head her. 

“Yes it would be easy to hate James, but who will make it easier for my son, as he grows and tries to find his place in a world that will never let him forget that he was born from men who covet death and blood? I will not allow him to think he was born of monsters, Blaine.”

“And if it’s the truth? Will you hide the truth from him about your father? About _his_ father?” Blaine demanded to know, the sudden spike in his rage pressing against her like heavy hands and she gasped, but she did not let go of where she held him, refusing to back down.

“Lina,” Kurt reached for their hands, trying to comfort them both at once. “You don’t have to excuse him. He might be Benito’s father but that doesn’t mean you just have to forget everything he did. That’s not fair to ether of you.”

“Fair? It was not fair for either of our mothers to die Kurt. It was not fair I had to watch my father hurt so many, or for Blaine’s father to feed his own son to his lust for power. It is not fair that any of us were born into this bottomless pit of death and darkness. I forget nothing. It is the rest of you who would have me forget,” she retorted back, her voice shaking. She pulled her hands from beneath Kurt’s and grasped Blaine by the face, kneeling until they were eye to eye, harrowed gaze to harrowed gaze.

“I am going to give Benito the truth, even if it cuts like a thousand knives to admit it. I loved your brother Blaine, despite it all, and Benito has to know that. He must, and you must remember the man that was once in your brother to be loved.”

 _Maybe then he will have a chance at loving himself_.

Neither of them knew whether she meant Benito or Cooper. It didn’t truly seem to matter.

Lina shuddered, the tears that had been threatening to spill since the beginning running hot and silent down her cheeks.

When Blaine pressed his head to hers and wrapped his arms around her she sagged, melting against his warmth and letting the beating of his heart settle her nerves. She knew it was just her natural response to the comfort of his dominance, but his embrace made her feel as if her fears were groundless, that nothing would either harm her or Benito again. It wasn’t true, but she let it comfort her just the same.

“I love you, you know.” Blaine whispered into her hair and she nodded against his chest. “I won’t let… I won’t let either of you suffer.”

The glow she felt from Blaine’s embrace doubled when she felt Kurt press to her back, wrapping his arms around her and Blaine so that she was sandwiched tightly between them. It was almost enough to make her smile through her tears.

And when Kurt thought to remind her _“We’re your family too. All of us, we’ve got more than just death and darkness. We’re stronger than it too.”_ she did.

~*~*~*~

If one took highway seventy one far enough south past Annhurst it would take them along the west border of Sharon Wood, what seemed to be an endless stretch of forest. Somewhere in that endless stretch of green and brown was a tree whose trunk had been blackened and polished to an inky sheen by a strike of lightning. Though it appeared dead outwardly, the bright vibrant leaves it was said to sport year round defied death. When Blaine had woken her from her exhausted sleep that morning with a sharp and sudden command it was to bring Brittany to it. The command still confused her, but then again there wasn’t anything about the whole ordeal that Santana didn’t find confusing.

She had thought that Blaine would have to send someone to pick them up, or that he might even have to come to them. Never before had a vampire set foot on Anderson land and there was more than enough magic steeped into the soil to prevent one from ever trying to without an invitation. She hadn’t expected Blaine to just open up the forest and allow Brittany to walk around willy nilly. It didn’t make any sense. Maybe he was trusting Santana to see her securely to the tree, but even still it was careless.

Santana may not have been overly familiar with the woods but she was more than familiar enough with the tree and the legends that surrounded it to lead the vampire woman there. Santana had a good eye for finding magical things.

In her stories, Santana’s abuela had called it _‘drew draig’_ , the _‘dragon oak’_. 

The legend was that after Arthur’s death the Merlin had lost it for a turn (apparently losing all your friends to horrible deaths could do that to even someone like Ian) and that the Lady of The Lake had locked him in some magical oak tree for a good decade or so for some much needed chill out time.

When Nimue had set him free Ian had been impressed enough by it that he’d taken with him a bag of its seeds. He’d supposedly given one to the freshly immigrated Andrew Anderson, who it was said had planted it right here in the forest. No one knew the extent or the nature of the trees powers, but as she and Brittany stepped around its raised roots and Santana got her first look at it she didn’t doubt any longer that the legends had some truth. She felt the magic emitting from the oak like a touch on her skin. The air around the tree buzzed with life, like it was surrounded by a legion of humming birds.

There was nothing of the kind in sight, nothing but trees and rustling foliage, and Santana bit her lip, casting a glance at the woman beside her out of the side of her eye to gage if she had noticed anything out of the ordinary. Brittany did seem awed by it. She extended a hand without thought, almost like a moth drawn to flame and instantly every sense of danger that Santana had went on high alert.

“Don’t touch it!” she snapped. Too late, much too late because Brittany’s palm was lying flat against the blackened bark and her cheeks had flushed with warmth and her eyes widened in delight.

“It sings. Can you hear it?” Brittany marveled breathlessly. She frowned when Santana pulled her safely away.

“I can’t hear anything! Just… stay back. Can’t you tell it’s dangerous?” Santana ignored the other woman’s hurt pout as she scouted the area surrounding the oak. She didn’t like how quiet and still it was in this part of the forest, or the fact that they hadn’t been stopped by a single member of Blaine’s guard yet, nor were there any in sight. “Where the hell is Anderson?”

“He’s coming. He had to see if we’d make it here first.”

Santana was surprised when Brittany answered and frowned at her. Brittany looked away from the tree to give her a small encouraging smile.

“It was a test.”

Santana did not like the sound of that. She felt the hair on the back of her neck rising, her skin itching for the shift. It wasn’t helped any by the sudden appearance of four wolves slinking seemingly from out of nowhere to corner them on all sides.

Santana bared her teeth, grabbing tightly to Brittany’s arm as she took a deep sniff. Her fear was only mildly abated by her recognition of one of the scents in her nose.

 _“She’s right,”_ Crawford’s voice filled her head. _“It was a test.”_

Santana had no idea what either of them was talking about, but if the accusation she heard in Adam’s thoughts and the fury she felt pressing in on them from all sides was any indication, it looked like they’d failed it. Her hand tightened on Brittany’s arm.

 _“When I move leap for the tree. Get up it as fast as you can and stick to the air. We’re not good with heights,”_ She instructed Brittany privately. She didn’t take her eyes off of Adam, waiting for the precise moment to attack and hoping bitterly that she could keep the four of them at bay until Brittany could get safely away. Vampires were excellent climbers and quick. She could do it if she didn’t get stupid and try to help.

“Why the test?” Santana asked, hoping still to diffuse the situation.

One of the wolves behind them growled, but to Santana’s shock Crawford snapped his jaws in warning at the smaller brown coat and the wolf stood down.

Turning back to her he thought heatedly, _“because only pack can touch the tree. Your leach friend should be a pile of ash right now.”_

It took a moment for Santana to put it together. The danger she’d sensed when Brittany went to touch it had been real. The tree was dangerous but not to members of Blaine’s pack. That meant that Brittany was somehow a part of Blaine’s pack. It was absurd, obscene even, to contemplate a vampire belonging to Westerville and yet…

She could feel Abuela’s hand striking her cheek; hear again the fury in her voice as she’d accused Santana of the impossible.

Brittany was ly-kindred. Somehow someway Anderson had known it- would have been the only one capable of doing it- and he must have asked Santana to lead Brittany to the tree to see if his little experiment had taken. It didn’t escape Santana either that if it hadn’t, that Brittany would now be dead and Blaine would have known that part too.

That made her unbelievably pissed, a feeling that wasn’t helped any by what happened next.

Brittany considered the wolf after he’d spoken her nose twitching as she tilted her head in thought before a tiny beatific smile spread on her lips.

“I know who you are. You’re the brother. She talked about you.”

Crawford’s light coat bristled at Brittany’s words, his incredulous thoughts harsh in their heads as he replied; _“Excuse me?”_

“Kala,” Brittany answered and Santana had never seen anything go so still as Adam did at that name.

“You smell like her.”

~*~*~*~

As soon as Brittany had touched the tree a hush had settled over the forest. In the house, waiting solemnly in his study, Blaine stood straighter in his seat, feeling the phantom touch of a hand against his chest. Like a ripple the warmth of that touch was felt first by his mate, Kurt who stood beside him, and then to the others in the pack.

Chandler, who had been asked to keep an eye on Benito while his mother was holed up in the study with the Alpha and Ian, shivered. He was uncertain about what it all meant.

A vampire was in the forest. Not only that, she’d touched the tree and no one who wasn’t pack was supposed to be able to touch it.

He knew when Adam and the others arrived with Santana and the vampire woman because their progress sent ripples of fear and disgust through every pack member they passed, the ripples of distress reaching Chandler and Benito playing quietly outside the study doors long before their visitors scents.

By the time Chandler did smell them- his nose filling with a heavy metallic funk that made him screw up his face in distaste- Benito had climbed into his lap with a whimper, and begun to whine for his mother.

“Shh, it’s alright. Everything’s fine,” Chandler reassured the cub even as Adam and the rest of the receiving party came down the hall. A pissed looking Santana and a beautiful blond woman were sandwiched between Noelle and Luke, all but being marched toward Blaine’s study.

Chandler, thank his lucky stars, had never had occasion to see a vampire up close. This one was tall and pale but other than the paleness of her skin none of the other myths about them appeared on the surface to be true. She didn’t have hair darker than sin, or black soulless eyes ringed in red flames, or even wicked and curled claws. She didn’t even look like she could hurt a fly. Indeed her smile was bright and wondrous as she looked around her at the opulent trappings of Blaine’s home, cheerful as any tourist seeing a new country for the first time.

 _“That’s her?”_ Chandler asked, catching Adam’s eye as the group came near. _“I thought vampires were supposed to be menacing?”_

He might have thought too soon because as Adam and the others made to escort Santana and the vampire female into the study Chandler felt the air crackle against his skin and it was the only warning he had before Luke and Noelle stumbled and the vampire was somehow nearly on top of him, reaching for the cub he held in his arms.

With only a second to spare Chandler pulled Benito away, backing up against the wall, a warning growl rumbling out of his throat even as Adam placed himself between them and the vampire and Santana grabbed at the woman’s arm while simultaneously trying to guard her back from Noelle and Luke.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare him,” the vampire woman said, her voice unthinkably sweet, her expression doubtfully innocent. “He shares my sire’s blood. That makes him coven.”

She reached again and Santana pulled her back with a hissed warning even as she was met with a chorus of growls from the others.

“Back off!” Adam warned. “I will kill you.”

“Try it Crawford,” Santana snarled in reply and Chandler’s heart leapt into his throat when Adam’s eyes went amber and hot, the wolf poised for attack.

“Come now, there’s no need for violence” a jarringly calm voice said from the study door. Ian’s judgmental gaze held them all still, deflating them one by one until they hung their heads in chagrin. For some reason Adam was the last to lower his head in difference to the wizard. He as all but vibrating with fury, glaring hatred at the vampire female, and Chandler worried that he’d lose his cool and attack her.

There was no telling how she’d hurt him, and what Blaine would do to anyone who dared to harm someone invited to the house with the promise of safety.

_“Adam?”_ Chandler called him gently, his heart pounding in his chest as Benito trembled against him. He didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until Adam’s eyes turned to him and the fury in them drained away. The anger was replaced by a gripping sorrow, a silent cry of pain that Chandler felt pulling at the youthful chords of their bond, but there was nothing he could do but watch as Ian laid a hand on his alpha-master’s arm and beckoned the small collection of lycans and their vampire guest into the study.

~*~*~*~

_“Who is that boy sleeping in the tower?!”_

_Nimue, Lady of the Lake, did not look up from her task at the child Morgana’s demand, for seeding required a complicated form of magic that called for the utmost concentration. Thankfully she had learned long ago to ignore the ill tempers of wayward youths._

_She extended her hand slowly. She waited for a welcoming glow from the pale bark of the ancient oak she stood under, before attempting to grasp any of the low hanging clusters of nuts. Just because the tree had granted her leave to take its fruit in one moment did not mean it was wise to presume it would in the next._

_The nuts were small, as pale as the silvery bark adorning their mother, and warm to the touch. Nimue had barely finished thanking the tree for them when she felt a harsh tug on the skirt of her dress. Sighing quietly to herself she looked down to find her student Morgana glaring up at her with impatient brown eyes._

_“Nimue did you not hear me? There is a boy, a human boy, asleep in the room next to mine.”_

_“Aye, I know there is,” Nimue answered her; placing the seeds she’d extracted in the small pouch she carried. “I placed him there myself when he arrived last evening.”_

_Morgana wrinkled her nose and made an expression of distaste._

_“But he is just a boy,” she stated incredulously as if Nimue might not have noticed and the lady chuckled, placing a hand momentarily on the young girls head before turning back toward the castle. It was a long walk through the orchard and their guest would have woken by the time they returned. Nimue had seen it._

_“Not just any boy,” she informed her young charge. “A prince.”_

_That at least seemed to catch Morgana’s interest._

_“A prince?” she pondered the thought for a moment, before seeming to lose interest in the thought. “Still he is not the blood of Avalon, so he should not be here. Unless his father angered you? Is he your prisoner, Nimue?”_

_“No,” Nimue answered simply._

_“Then why is he here?!” Morgana insisted darting in front of her on the path and planting her hands on her slim hips. Nimue had only to look at her to know that she would not be moved until her curiosity was satisfied. A less patient woman would be annoyed, but Nimue had always had a great deal of love for children, even unruly mortal ones._

_“He is here, oh curious one, because he needed shelter and I provided it. And if you applied half as much fervor to your studies as you do to pestering me with your questions, you might not have missed that he is indeed the blood of Avalon.”_

_“Only a very little I should think!” Morgana huffed in reply, clearly miffed at her oversight. “He is no brother of mine or I would have sensed it!”_

_“Aye, in that you speak true. The Merlin did not sire him as he did you.”_

_“So who did?” Morgana demanded immediately to know._

_“An accomplished young enchantress-though she did not wish to be.” Nimue recounted with a wistful smile. “Her name was Sabe and she was once a curious student of mine, much like you.”_

_Morgana paused at that. She didn’t immediately follow Nimue as the lady continued down the path but Nimue was not concerned with whether she would or wouldn’t. The girl needed time._

_She was not surprised to feel the soft slide of Morgana’s hand in hers some minutes later._

_“My sister then?” the girl asked quietly, a pensive expression furrowing her youthful skin. Her loneliness was deep and reaching. Nimue could all but see it stretching within the small cavity of her chest._

_“Aye, though sired long before you. It is a great pity you never met.”_

_“Did she look like me?”_

_“She had your dark hair, and she was sweet. As you can be when you’ve a mind to be. Aye, she was sweet and bright.”_

_“But she did not like magic? She didn’t want to be a witch.” Morgana sounded disdainful, and well Nimue knew why the young girl took such fierce pride in her magical blood. It was all she had in the world._

_Nimue squeezed her hand gently, shaking her head in reproach._

_“It was different for Sabe. She was the daughter of a lady. If her mother’s affair with your father had been discovered it would have meant death for them. Magic is not always understood or looked kindly upon by mortals. They burn witches Morgana, never forget that.”_

_“Only if we let them,” Morgana muttered darkly._

_“Sabe was not so fierce as you. She left here to marry her betrothed and never regretted the choice. She became a queen and was loved by many.”_

_“And now she is dead,” Morgana guessed darkly. Nimue faltered in her step only for a moment, feeling the sudden bite of ice touch her heart once more._

_“That’s why the boy is here. Isn’t it?”_

_“Aye,” Nimue admitted beginning down the path once more. “She is dead. Her people serve a false king, and everything that she and her king built has come to nothing. It is the way of mortals. Their kingdoms rise from nothing and they will all fall back into nothing, time and time again.”_

_“If you believe that why did you call him here? What is it to us if he is the son of Sabe or the son of a goat herder?” Morgana questioned with an impertinent sniff. “His blood is thin. He will never be a great wizard like my father.”_

_Nimue was nodding as the castle came into sight beyond the edge of the trees, acknowledging the truth of what Morgana said. Lancelot’s presence in her home was highly unusual and unprecedented._

_“No he shan’t,” she agreed. “But he shall be a great man and that is something.”_

_Morgana looked unconvinced. Nimue chuckled, musing quietly, “Perhaps we need him. Sadness is a wearing thing and the forest grows weary of winter. Perhaps he will bring spring again for both of us.”_

_More than that, Nimue had seen that the boy had a destiny. But his was so tangled up with Morgana’s that Nimue did not feel it wise to say so._

_Morgana would see that soon enough._

~*~*~*~ 

When Ian walked into the study Kurt immediately knew that something was wrong. It was something bigger than the fear rolling off of Lina, or the revulsion and disquiet coming so strongly off of Luke and Noelle as they marched in after Santana and the blond female he remembered from the last full moon. It wasn’t even explained away by Blaine’s tension, and that was pulling at Kurt so strongly that he couldn’t seem to stop himself from twitching, feeling that disconcerting sense of pressure in his chest he’d come to equate with his wolf being too close to the surface.

No, something very _specific_ felt wrong as he caught sight of Adam’s expression, and Santana Lopez marched right up to Blaine’s desk without any regard for Kurt or Wes who glowered darkly at her as she glared murder at Blaine.

“You’re a real piece of work Anderson, you know that?” She hissed through gritted teeth and Blaine met her with an unflinching stare.

“Have a seat Santana.”

Blaine gestured to one of the chairs in front of the desk and Santana, with a furious snarl tossed the offending furniture to the floor.

“No I will not ‘have a seat’!” She bellowed and the hair rose all over Kurt’s body, a low growl rumbling in his chest unbidden as his senses screamed danger and instinct urged him to protect his mate who was facing down an angry she-wolf with a remarkable level of calm.

Blaine didn’t take his eyes off of Santana but the slight raise of his hand, however minute a gesture, was enough to keep Kurt and the others from intervening.

“I’m sick of your family and your pet wizard playing games with all of our lives!” Santana screamed at him. “I trusted you!”

“What exactly have I done to break your trust?” Blaine asked her, voice quiet but firm and if anything it only seemed to make Santana angrier, her teeth sharp and menacing as she bared them in a rumbling snarl.

“Don’t toy with me Anderson. She’s one of yours and you know it! That fucking test of yours could have killed her!”

That took Kurt by surprise. It took very little searching in Blaine’s mind to find the events that Santana was referring to. When Sebastian’s memories had planted the fear in Blaine’s mind that the mysterious James might actually be his brother Cooper he’d contacted Santana and given her instructions to meet at a certain tree within the forest. The origins of that tree were all there in Blaine’s memory and Blaine didn’t attempt to hide any of it from him, or his intent to have Brittany touch it.

“Yes, that was a risk,” Blaine answered Santana’s accusation and Kurt’s unspoken disapproval. His eyes looked past Santana and settled on Brittany who stood silent and nervous behind the lycan female. “As of this morning, Brittany, I suspected that the man responsible for siring you is the same man that has been conspiring with Sebastian Smythe and your coven to kill me.

“Two things were possible. On the one hand you could simply be a victim of his, a potential friend who could maybe help me figure out what his plans are and what he hopes to achieve with his schemes or… you could be a part of them, you could freely roam the forest and harm my friends and my family if I did not go back on my word to Santana and bar you from the forest. Touching the tree was the only way to be a hundred percent sure you were a friend and under no compulsion to do us harm. It was that simple.”

“Simple?” Santana cried indignantly, but behind her Brittany nodded quietly, offering Blaine a tired looking smile. Santana however was having none of it. “I don’t _believe_ you, Anderson. I told you she wasn’t like the rest of them! I told you, but it wasn’t good enough. You—”

“I won’t put the safety of my pack at risk because you’re in love with her Santana!” Blaine interrupted her sharply. Santana shrank back, going pale. Maybe it was the dominant push behind the words, but Kurt thought that it was more likely at the words themselves. Blaine and Santana stared each other down, Santana looking stricken and more than a bit unhinged- like she was moments from leaping on him. Nobody missed the surge of utter disgust in the room, all but oozing off the watching guard wolves. Kurt waited with hitched breath, fingers curling against his ribs as he tensed.

Finally, like a dam breaking, Santana looked away. Her eyes were wild and wet as she lowered her head and backed down, but not before insisting heatedly that she wasn’t in fact in love with Brittany. Kurt didn’t think anyone in the room, least of all Santana, believed it. Blaine was much gentler when he spoke to her again.

“I had to be sure,” he said as he stood, and then he turned to address Brittany again.

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t an easy choice.”

Brittany to her credit seemed to understand. She nodded again and murmured, “You have a lot to protect.”

When she looked directly at him Kurt flinched, suddenly seeing her again as he’d last seen her: terrified and bloodied on the pavement as he savaged her.

He didn’t understand why, but she smiled for him too. Kurt didn’t know what to make of it but it made his heart ache, faced with the woman’s unaccountably sweet nature. The others might not think it but he could not forget that she had protected Tina at her own expense, and even now she was showing them kindness when she was being met with hostility nearly on every side.

At that very moment Adam pushed forward, refusing to so much as look at the woman he spoke so strongly against as he demanded answers.

“Alpha, this _creature_ has been made ly-kindred. I think we’re all owed an explanation.” Adam glanced around for affirmation from the other guard wolves in and was encouraged by the unhappy expressions on all their faces. Even Blaine was nodding pensively.

“I agree,” he said, beckoning to Brittany even before he had finished. “I can’t explain it, but Brittany maybe you can? Santana says you were converted here. Could you please tell us how that happened?”

Eyeing the blond alpha nervously Brittany stepped forward until she and Adam were shoulder to shoulder. His face twisting in disgust Adam turned away from her, striding away towards Blaine’s book shelves seemingly to put as much space between himself and her as possible. Brittany flinched and Santana glowered at him. Kurt worried. It was unlike Adam to be so cruel. In all the time that Kurt had known him- even if it was an admittedly short amount of time- he had never known Adam to be so hateful. Even when others around him had been treating Kurt less than kindly and he had no reason to think favorably of him either Adam had been kind.

Now Kurt could sense his emotions churning within him like a storm and they were just as dark and violent to match. The sensation was doubly strong as it came both through the pack bond and through Kurt’s direct bond with Blaine.

Blaine didn’t say anything, but Kurt could tell by their intense focus on each other that they were conversing. It was a long moment before Blaine looked back at Brittany and when the vampire female stepped up to the desk and, Adam held his tongue.

Blaine walked around the desk until he and Brittany were standing eye to eye.

“I’ve only ever done a soul search before with lycans,” he informed her somewhat gravely. “Ian assures me that it can be done with your kind as well, but I feel I have to warn you. I can lessen the pain but I can’t stop the soul search from being draining for either of us. I’ve never enjoyed using magic so I don’t have much practice at it.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t do it,” Santana grumbled. When Brittany looked at her she shrugged, avoiding the other woman’s eyes as she muttered, “But it’s your choice, obviously. If you want someone else rifling through your insides be my guest.”

All eyes returned to Brittany then as she considered Blaine with a pensive expression. When she finally nodded Blaine took a breath, nodding as well and Kurt felt the thrumming of his nerves over their bond. It wasn’t a conscious thought sending Blaine assurance but he felt Blaine receive it just the same and the answering warmth that came back to him in a quietly pleasant reverb.

“Alright,” Blaine said, bolstered. “You should also know I’m going to allow the others to see what I do. It will save time, but you should know anyway… I need to see his face, and know exactly what he did to you. Are you sure you want to relive that?”

“Yes,” Brittany responded almost immediately. She shrugged, looking to Santana briefly before she confessed, “If it means helping you stop more people from dying then I can do it. That’s my choice.”

~*~

_All day Brittany felt someone watching her. She told Mommy, but Mommy told her it was just paranoia. Daddy asked her if she was nervous about her dance recital._

_Brittany wasn’t nervous. She loved to dance more than anything and didn’t mind at all that a bunch of people would come to watch her. She’d dance for a thousand people if she could. Brittany would dance anywhere, even all by herself- and she often did._

_That night after Mommy and Daddy had tucked her in and said goodnight she climbed out of bed and ran through the steps of the first dance just to be sure she had them. She pretended that she was a famous ballerina dancing for a crowd of hundreds, humming quietly to herself._

_It was awhile before she realized she was hearing another voice besides her own, a smooth and sweet tenor, and she went still drinking in the sound._

_“I know you; I walked with you once upon a dream. I know you, the gleam in your eyes so familiar a gleam.”_

_Slowly Brittany turned towards the sound. Her window was open, the curtains billowing around the lanky boy who was sitting on her window sill. He was pale with dark hair and long limbs, his skin gleaming in the moonlight. Brittany noted with widening eyes that his clothing was torn and that there were deep scratches littering his face and arms._

_He was older than her and a stranger on top of it, but despite it all she was not afraid. His windswept hair and the wicked tilt to his grin put her in mind of naughtiness, and the mischievous gleam in his eyes promised it._

_She should be very frightened, she knew that on one level, but it was beyond her to be scared in the face of such enchantment. She could not know it, but she was lost the moment he began to sing. His voice was magic. He was magic, like Peter Pan, and the thought alone was exhilarating. She was grinning when he hopped down from the window sill and grasped her hand. He sang softly as he led her around the room in a slow dance, as if she was not dressed in her night gown but gowned like a beautiful princess and he a gallant prince._

_“And I know it’s true that visions are seldom all they seem. But if I know you, I know what you’ll do. You’ll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream.”_

_Their dance ended in a whirl and Brittany beamed up at him, practically thrumming with excitement. The boy smiled down at her, reaching to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear._

_“Who are you?” She asked, enthralled, her head emptying of all thoughts of worry or fear._

_“I heard you humming.” He remarked instead of answering. “My mother used to sing me that song at night.”_

_He seemed so very sad when he said it that Brittany was sure he no longer had a mother to tuck him in at night and sing him lullabies. It made her sad for him, so she did what Mommy always did for her when she felt sad. She hugged him tight around his middle and buried her face against the warm cotton of his shirt._

_The boy seemed surprised, gasping and going stiff for a moment, but then his arms came around her and he held her tight with a shudder. He was warm against her cheek and the splash of his tears falling against her skin was even warmer._

_“You’re shivering” she remarked, holding back the urge to cry herself._

_“I’m hungry,” she heard him respond, his nails digging into her through her thin night gown. She felt a chill and he gripped her chin, his fingers hard against the bones of her jaw as he raised her face to him._

_“Shhh. Pretty Girl, don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.” He lowered his lips to her brow and she felt the cool scrape of his teeth against her skin and thought it tickled. “Come on an adventure with me.”_

_“To Neverland?” She asked, feeling a great swell of wonder. It started deep in her chest and spread outward._

_“To Neverland. You will never grow old and die there, and we shall never be lonely or forgotten again.”_

_She agreed, because it was a beautiful thought, his voice was full of magic, and her head was full of dreams._

_He took her to a forest that he called enchanted and he led her to a crypt with weeping angels carved upon the door. Beneath the crypt there were many chambers, and Brittany should have been afraid of being underground in the cold and dark with only cool blue fire for light; but the dream remained beautiful even when her magical boy showed her a room with a giant stone table stained dark with blood and adorned with heavy silver shackles._

_“Don’t fret darling, this is not where you sleep. This is where Father works. You must never come in here or the Dark One will get you. He’ll drink your blood and grind your bones. I’ve seen him do it.”_

_The warning was dark but the dream stayed beautiful until he pulled up a rug, revealing a wooden door carved into the floor above a set of stone steps. The steps led them into another room bellow, buried so deep in the dark that she was sure it had all but been forgotten by those that had built it. There was no blue fire to light the way but the boy did not seem to need light to see._

_Still she was grateful when he reached for something in the dark and a moment later a match flared and he lit a candle on the wall; that is until she saw the cages._

_There were four of them. Big, ugly iron ones pushed up against the wall. Their floors were stained with muddy unsettling colors, and the stench of them reached her nose about the same time as she understood that the twisted objects littering their bottoms were not sticks but bones._

_The dream shattered._

_One of the cages held not just bones and rotting flesh, but the huddled form of another little girl. She was naked and filthy, whimpering at the sight of Brittany and the boy, curling in on herself, her blond hair her only form of cover._

_The girl was no older than six, and she was sitting alone in the dark, caged with the dead._

_Brittany screamed. She tried to run but it was too late; the boy caught her by the waist._

_“Don’t leave me!” He wrestled her to the ground. Brittany screamed and kicked, sobbing for help but there was no one who could hear her down here._

_“You can’t leave me. You can’t. You can’t.”_

_He shook her hard until her head cracked against the stone floor and all she saw beyond the bright lights was the bright demon red of his eyes._

_“I won’t let you.”_

_And he never did, no matter how much either of them cried or begged for death he never let either her or Kala go. Sometimes there were other children who screamed in the dark, but Brittany never met them. Sire would creep down the stairs without lighting any of the candles and strange voices would echo off the walls as above them someone wailed and strange light flickered through the cracks in the door to splash the walls with shadows and stranger colors._

_“Shhh. Shhh,” he’d sooth them as they whimpered and cowered in their cages. “You can’t let them hear you or you’ll be next. It will be over soon, I promise. I’ll make it better. I’ll make it right.”_

_Sometimes it was him they heard screaming in the room up above, but he never died like those other children. He’d come to them afterwards, bloodied and pale like a ghost. His whole body would twitch and shake while he clawed at his skin like he wanted to unravel himself._

_His skin would roil, his bones creaking as the demon they all knew to fear tried to tear its way out of him._

_If they were lucky the wolf would win. The wolf had wicked claws and even sharper jaws that would snap and froth in the most terrifying way; but he’d tear everything in the room to shreds except for them because they were pack and the boy said you never harmed pack._

_The fanged creature with the red eyes was a different story._

_He didn’t recognize them or anything at all. He was too hungry._

_They were too breakable so he killed them and they were born as something else and sadly broken._

_He cried before he killed them._

_“I’m sorry. So sorry. I’ll make it better. I’ll make it right.”_

_But nothing was right. Kala lost every bit of mind she had to lose and Brittany was only left with half, but even with half a mind she knew the truth._

_“You can’t.”_

~*~*~

The forest was uncommonly quiet but it was not still. Everyone, wherever they were calling their home that night, had dropped everything when the first of the howls rang out over the trees. The Alpha’s call to arms hadn’t been heard in these woods for almost eleven years. Allie wasn’t the only one who experienced a haunting moment of ‘déjà vu’ as the notes reached into her chest and she stood in the middle of the room, the circle of cubs she’d been attending to forgotten as she turned in the direction of the call.

She’d been about ten years younger the first time and doing something similar. That day she’d felt a moment of elation- her worry that Blaine had perished after his escape or come to some other harm, appeased by the missed and welcome sound of his voice calling out to them in wolf song- and now wasn’t much different as the thrill of an eminent hunt rushed through her, the wolf standing at attention for her Alpha, ready and always willing.

And just like back then the feeling was followed swiftly by dark dread.

War was war, and only fools looked forward to it with anything but. Allie had never been a fool.

She left one of the den mother’s with instructions for the children and made her way with all of the other able bodied members of the pack where they gathered around their Alpha.

What he told them was shocking; shattering even for many of them who had long relied on the fact that Dagan and all that he had wrought with him had been eradicated during the last territory war.

Allie had to stop for a moment, balling her shaking hands. Learning that Cooper was alive and behind the threat against them felt like enough to break her heart. She’d known him since he was a small cub. It had been terrible enough before living with the thought of him dead, having suffered so greatly and become such a monster.

She’d never forgiven herself for her failure in not protecting him. She was Den Mother of the very school where Julian had snatched his test subjects. She was those boys aunt for mercy’s sake, the only mother they had to protect them and she had not.

It was little consolation knowing that she had saved those she could, that many more of the children might have died in Julian’s quest for power if not for her being in the way and the Alpha’s fear of inciting rebellion at her removal. She’d lost the woman who had been her Lady as well as a great friend, then her sister and all but one of their children; unable to preserve them, unable to protect them.

There was only one way to feel about that, and sometimes it felt like too much.

Allie took a deep breath and let the wave of anguish pass. There was much to be done in preparation for the battle to come. Their enemy was coming to them and Blaine had given them all strict instructions- Allie’s to assist Ian in moving the children back to Dalton and begin safeguarding the structure. The den mothers must be prepared for possible siege because they were the children’s last line of defense and she their authority.

She hoped it would not come to that. None of them had fought vampires before and their chances were grim if Balaur and his people managed to get that far. Then again if the leeches got through Blaine and the guard all the way to the school, the battle would likely have been lost already anyway.

They’d fight to the last wolf just the same; it was the way of things.

There would come a time for grief soon enough, but it wasn’t now.

~*~*~*~

Dinner that night was tense and grim. For once the hall was quiet, the members of the guard speaking in low murmurs if they bothered to speak openly at all. Blaine didn’t need to look at their faces and catch all the intense stares and too focused gazes to know that many of them were holding heated discussions between their minds. Despite the quiet the tension in the room was practically screaming.

Brittany’s presence at the house didn’t help at all. He’d had to field more than one angry demand to know why he hadn’t imprisoned her now that he was certain that Balaur had plans to betray them during the conclave. With her being ly-kindred there had been no way around telling the pack about Cooper, not that Blaine thought he could have kept it hidden in the first place.

He’d worried there would be a mutiny when it spread that a leech had somehow become a part of them and the natural conclusion was made that it had been Blaine himself-being the Alpha- who brought her into the fold.

_“It couldn’t possibly have been anyone else. With all due respect your track record is hardly stellar Alpha”_ Harvey had reminded them with a glare in Kurt’s direction. _“Your guilt for your mate’s treatment of her last moon is the obvious cause and it cannot be allowed to go on. Are we to let our enemy climb into our bed now?”_

His words were met with angry agreement of the crowd but thankfully Ian had cleared his throat and taken things in hand.

_“You’re forgetting Harvey who her sire is.”_

_“Cooper might have a vampire’s power now but Blaine is still the Alpha!”_ Adam had immediately shot back, but of everyone Blaine blamed him the least for his doubts. His sister’s death was an old wound, but it was almost as fresh now as the day he’d found her again, only to have to destroy her. Blaine had always wondered why she’d been taken.

She’d been one of the first and the only one stolen away outside pack territory. Where all the other students had disappeared while on school grounds Kala had gone missing while they were on expedition, miles from either his father or Dagan.

It made sense now, knowing it hadn’t been his father who had kept her captive but Cooper. Cooper who had always been jealous that Blaine had managed to find such a close friend in another cub, who had always commented on how pretty she was, who grew unreasonably angry when Adam teased her as any older brother might and yet she still preferred her brother’s company to his.

In hindsight it all seemed clear now; but then again he was no longer only a boy of five.

Cooper had taken Kala because she’d reminded him of his mother Tanya, because he was lonely and jealous and Blaine had no doubt that some part of him had wanted Blaine to suffer her loss.

He had, but the Crawford’s had suffered most of all. So no, he didn’t blame Adam for his anger or his shaken trust.

 _“ I’m not a hundred percent certain myself, but I do indeed believe that this happened as a result of Cooper’s feelings for the woman and not Blaine’s.”_ Ian had responded and Harvey had protested again, but the wizard had raised his hand for silence and demanded the chance to explain.

_“It’s true that only pack Alpha’s are given the gift to mark another being lycan kindred. Such enchantments were placed in order to prevent conversion every time some poor creature happened to be bit by one of you._

_“Other pack leaders are elected by their strength and sanctioned by myself and the Guild but it has never been that way here. All of you at least suspect why, and my friends the time has passed us to keep such things in the dark._

_“Years ago Andrew Anderson came here and made this land a safe haven for lycan kind, but he was protecting more than just the people that settled with him here. The magic seeped into this ground as well as the blood of he and all his decedents protects a legacy: Arthur’s legacy.”_

Nobody had spoken after the confirmation of all their wondering, all their wild imaginings after stories shared in the dark and rumors that had passed long ago into the feeling of myth. They’d hardly seemed to breathe at all.

_“Magic is unpredictable and blood magic, my friends, blood magic is the most complicated of them all. The power of the Anderson Alphas is tied to their blood and it is not designed to pick and choose who has a right to wield it based on merit, only on blood._

_“The current Alpha would of course be given the fullest grasp of it, but the heirs had to be allowed a minor measure of access. They would need to in order for myself and their parents to properly prepare them to wield the power in its entirety should they themselves become the next Alpha. They would especially need access to it if they should ever need to take the title by force._

They’d all thought it at the same time.

Inevitably one of them had.

_“Blaine took this land from his own father and until the last blow was dealt technically Julian was still king here, and yet his son was allowed to defy him and allowed to wield Excalibur to do so.”/ ___

__Ian had looked at Kurt then, a wry smile twisting his lips._ _

___“And as you so helpfully pointed out to us already Harvey, Blaine showed us all that even in exile and stripped of the ability to access all other more physical powers, his emotional connection to Kurt was too strong for even my magic to prevent their souls becoming kindred._ _ _

___“Cooper, wretched as he was, needed love. For a moment he had the love of a child, and so she stands among you now as kindred. A human woman once loved him when he had not felt love in many years. Now she stands among you as lycan as the rest and mother to another heir. Make of that what you will but know that no matter what your feelings, a greater threat is at hand._ _ _

___“As before it does not come from outsiders, but from within. If you do not stand together, fight for each other, you will fall. As Camelot fell, as Arthur and those he loved fell. Learn from your past my friends, or you’ll be doomed to repeat it.”_ _ _

__Which was why when Adam set his fork down with a distinct clatter, unable to take another bite, Blaine already knew what he wanted even before he said it._ _

__“I need to see,” he said and Blaine nodded to him and stood. He glanced momentarily at Kurt, an unspoken request, and was infinitely grateful that they did not seem to need words._ _

__The walk to the family crypt was silent. Blaine cut his palm wordlessly and grasped the lever hidden behind Andrew’s tombstone. He tried not to see his father doing the same time and time again, or Cooper cutting his palm with elongated fangs and desperate eyes._ _

__As they walked into the darkened tunnel the memory of seeing Cooper lead Brittany down the passage and through the wizard’s flame was too strong to chase away. The flame that guarded the entrance to the place where Excalibur and the rest of the family treasure were kept flared up bright and hot as they walked through it. It left Blaine’s whole body stinging with pain and his limbs limp and drained. He clutched tightly to Kurt who having only been through it once before seemed even worse off._ _

__Adam though was worst off of all, a terrifying cry ripped from his throat as the fire seemed to swallow him, Kurt and Blaine losing him a moment in the roar of the flames before they stumbled through it and the blond alpha staggered forward only to crumple at the feet of the stone statue in the middle of the room._ _

___“It wasn’t like that before,”_ Kurt thought widely as he panted against Blaine’s side. _“Why did it do that?”__ _

__Blaine had a suspicion but no real answer so he said nothing instead he approached the other shivering alpha carefully and offered him his hand._ _

__“You alright Crawford?” He asked and he received a derisive snort and a dark chuckle in reply._ _

__“Is anything alright?” Adam asked as took the offered hand. Blaine pulled him to his feet and Kurt steadied him when he wobbled. “Well, where is it?”_ _

__Blaine didn’t need to ask what he meant. His eyes went immediately to his father’s banner, colored an appropriate yellow and hanging listlessly in front of a hidden door. Blaine had not been into the rooms Dagan and his father had used for their experiments since the day he and Ian had come down here to break the last of the enchantments the dark mage had woven over them. Neither of them had known about the room under it._ _

__Santana was right, he realized as the three made their way to the place where Brittany and Adam’s sister had been held in captivated, the place where Cooper had tortured them and broken their minds and bodies._ _

__Evil like that couldn’t be swept away completely. It left something behind._ _

__It was selfish, but Blaine was glad that he had Kurt to hold when they got their first look at the cages, when the stench of death stale and molding seemed to curdle in their noses, overwhelming enough to nearly choke them._ _

__Blaine held him tight and took comfort from the solid feel of him in his arms, the harsh sound of his heart pounding in his chest and the feel of his skin beneath his hands._ _

__He knew it was selfish because Adam was left alone to face the reality of those harsh metal cages, the implication of the soiled floor and the awful smell, of the bones piled on top of each other like logs._ _

__The blond man shuddered, letting out a rush of air like he’d been punched hard in the stomach, a moment later curling inward as a vile sounding gag constricted his throat._ _

__He raced back up the steps and Blaine and Kurt rushed after him, calling his name even though neither of them really expected him to stop._ _

__To their surprise he did, back inside the treasure room, right back at Arthur’s statue. He howled, kicking and screaming at it with such fury that for one terrified moment Blaine feared he might attempt to grasp the sword in Arthur’s hand. It would have been a death sentence._ _

__But thankfully he didn’t, spending his rage on the unyielding stone until he seemed to break, staggering to a stop and sliding once again to the statue’s feet._ _

__Kurt was at his side a moment later, tears in his eyes as he knelt to cradle Adam’s sobbing form to his chest, unable to do more than shush him as the alpha clung to him with white knuckles._ _

__Blaine didn’t feel any sort of jealousy. He couldn’t when Adam’s heart was broken and he knew it was his fault. This was his legacy, and these were his people being crushed by it. This was his friend suffering yet again because of his family. So Blaine didn’t try to touch him, not when he could still see Kala laying in one of those cages, calling for her brother to come rescue her. Not when Adam now had to live with those memories too._ _

__He waited until Adam’s cries had quieted mostly to sniffles, and pride won out over grief and he straightened his spine, pulling away from Kurt’s arms._ _

__“Adam…” his voice cracked and Blaine cleared it, curling his hands into fists._ _

__“We’ll get justice for her. He’ll die for this.” He swore it, meaning ever last word. Kurt looked up at him eyes wide with alarm and heavy with meaning. Blaine already knew what he’d say before he said it._ _

__“Blaine. He’s your brother.”_ _

__The words were like broken glass being shoved into his chest._ _

__“That doesn’t matter.”_ _

__When Kurt didn’t refute it he assumed it was because he knew it was true._ _

__~*~*~*~_ _

___It was spring in the forest of Brocéliande when Lancelot pushed his horse past its last wind to the edge of the lake. He leapt from his mount, ignoring the sweat running into his eyes and the exhaustion of his body. His mission was too urgent to pay any head to the state of his physical body._ _ _

___Coming to a halt just where the cool water lapped at his boots he cupped his hands in front of his mouth and bellowed, “Nimue!”_ _ _

___His cries echoed out over the silent lake shore and were swallowed up by the grey mist rising from the center of the lake. When no response came he growled low in the back of his throat and strode desperately into the water, intent on marching all the way into the mist if he had to._ _ _

___A strong grip caught his arm, hauling him back from the water and Lancelot charged at the unwanted intruder before his sanity came back to him and he recognized the young woman staring him down with a reproachful glare._ _ _

___“Morgana?”_ _ _

___“Aye, it’s me you fool. Are you trying to get yourself killed?” She scolded pulling him further from the lakes edge. “You may call yourself Lancelot of the Lake, but lest you forget the lake is no longer your home. You abandoned it. And me.”_ _ _

___Even desperate as he was Lancelot heard the hurt behind her words. It had been many years since he’d left Nimue’s castle in Avalon to return to the world of mortal men. It had hurt his heart to do so, but he had known deep down that Avalon would never truly be home to him. His home and what was left of his family was out here, waiting for someone to do them justice-which he had, with Arthur’s help and now it was Arthur who needed him._ _ _

___His expression must have been terrible because Morgana’s wrath with him cooled, and her hands gentled where they gripped him._ _ _

___“Lancelot? What ails you?” she questioned with concern and Lancelot shuddered._ _ _

___“It’s the king… Arthur. He is ill and no one can cure what ails him. We have many enemies, some not above using magic. It is magic that takes him from us now and the Merlin has not returned from his journey to the south,” Lancelot explained in a rush, turning to search the lake franticly for any sign of Nimue’s arrival. He’d known it was a thankless quest getting the Lady to agree to leave the lake, she never had ventured further than the forest before, but he’d had to try._ _ _

___The sympathetic brush of Morgana’s fingers against his neck gave him a sudden rush of inspiration and he whirled back around to grip her arms, looking no doubt like a mad man._ _ _

___“But you, Morgana are his daughter. You are a child of the Lake, as my mother was, and Nimue has taught you the ways of magic. You must come with me and see to him.”_ _ _

___“See to your king? I cannot-”_ _ _

___“You must!” he insisted with vigor, his grip becoming unconsciously cruel. “Morgana he’s my friend and he will die.”_ _ _

___“And I am sorry for it, Lancelot, truly!” Morgana pulled her limbs from his grasp, his hands burning where they had touched her skin as her gaze accused him of madness. “But all men die. If I leave here I may not be able to return, just as Nimue warned you when you left. You would have me give up the only home I have for a stranger?”_ _ _

___“For my brother!” Lancelot insisted, seething with pent up frustration, the anguish of living with Arthur’s demise. But she was right. This was not the way and he had never been a brute. Flushed with shame he backed away from her, breathing deeply to cool the fury inside of him._ _ _

___When he felt he could speak again without losing his head he spread his hands. He was without armor or weapon, without coin or artifice: simply a beggar._ _ _

___“He is a brother to me, the same way I once called you sister. He has fought for me, bled for me, and I for him. He is good in a way that I could only hope to be… I vowed to stand beside him, I vowed to protect him. Please. If you have any love for me at all, help me now Morgana. Help him. ”_ _ _

___Many things would come to be said of Morgana Le Fey in the centuries to come. She would be many things to many people. To some she would be known as a healer and a goddess, and to others a witch and a wicked enchantress._ _ _

___What cannot be said of Morgana is that she never knew love; for as it was, she once loved Lancelot greatly. She loved greatly enough to leave the sanctuary of the lake with him that day, and had compassion enough to think it worth the risk to save the life of a man he called a friend. Neither she nor Lancelot noticed Nimue rising from the gray water of the Lake, watching their departure in silence._ _ _

___She would not see either of them again for a great while. She had seen it._ _ _

__~*~*~*~_ _

__They went over the plan that night over and over. After the ordeal of visiting the cellar beneath Julian’s chamber Kurt would have liked to curl into a ball on his bed and close his eyes until the images they’d seen in Brittany’s mind faded away; but he doubted that those memories would ever fade. And if they were haunting him he could only begin to imagine what they were doing to Adam who had remained dull eyed and silent the rest of the evening._ _

__He’d tried suggesting he go see Quinn, or lay down somewhere or something, but quite grimly he’d insisted that there was too much to do for any one of them to lay around. And that seemed to be that as far as Blaine and the pack were concerned. There were bodies to be buried, children and families to be moved and prepped for possible danger, strategies to be formed._ _

__Kurt kept his head up and his hands busy, following Blaine’s lead and helping where he possibly could no matter how much he wanted to stand up on a chair and scream for them all to just stop. Weren’t any of them afraid? Didn’t any of them know that absolutely everything had changed and they might not live past the full moon? Was he the only one so terrified he didn’t think he had trouble breathing just thinking about it?_ _

__He didn’t realize his hands were shaking until Blaine was holding them, gently prying the brush and pot he was holding away from him._ _

__“You should go to bed Kurt,” Blaine suggested softly and Kurt immediately frowned._ _

__None of the others except for those omegas with children had gone to bed yet and he absolutely did not want to be babied. Even Lina was still hard at work, painting the symbols that Ian had shown them onto the walls of the house in holy water._ _

__Ian was placing enchantments all over the house and the school to weaken the vampires and Blaine’s private rooms were already warded heavily against intruders._ _

__“There’s still more rooms to finish,” Kurt pointed out; reaching to take back the small pot of water but Blaine held it away._ _

__“Just this hall and we don’t need all six of us to do it.”_ _

__At his words Adam and some of the others (including Lina and Kitty) looked up, their expressions as worn as Kurt felt._ _

__“Adam and I can finish here.” Blaine addressed them all this time. “Thank all of you for your work. You have your instructions for the morning, but we should call it a night. You’ll need your rest. Noelle, spread the word would you?”_ _

___“So do you,”_ Kurt thought even as Noelle was nodding in affirmation but Blaine didn’t respond as they watched the others gratefully put down their pots and brushes and began meandering out of the hallway. Lina and Chandler were the only ones who dragged their feet. Lina stared meaningfully at Kurt until he nodded for her to start along without him. It wasn’t surprising to see Chandler’s gaze locked firmly on Adam, every line of his body clearly reluctant to leave Adam behind, but Kurt was grateful for it just the same._ _

__It wasn’t right that there wasn’t any time for any of them to take a breath, for Adam to deal with the grief Brittany’s memories had opened up. Proper or not he hoped Chandler wouldn’t leave Adam alone that night._ _

__When the hall was empty except for the three of them Blaine finally looked at him again._ _

__“You too, Kurt.”_ _

__“You giving me orders now, Anderson?” Kurt asked with a sardonic lift of his brow and Blaine smiled._ _

__There wasn’t any heat behind the words and Kurt didn’t resist when Blaine leaned forward, his shorter frame slotting easily against his as they grounded themselves in the feel of the other._ _

__“I am the Alpha here,” Blaine teased gently, his mouth opening on the skin of Kurt’s shoulder and his teeth nibbling gently._ _

__“Then as your respectful and loving mate, I humbly request that you join me in bed before you drop dead of exhaustion. Please also note that if my request is denied I reserve the right to come out here and drag you there. ”_ _

__Blaine huffed a laugh against his shoulder before leaning back and meeting Kurt’s eyes._ _

__“Deal,” he murmured and his were warm and fraught with longing and it took everything Kurt had not to lean down and kiss him, but they were both mindful of Adam still in the room, grieving as much as either of them and with no mate to find comfort in._ _

__Blaine coming into Kurt’s life had brought with it a lot of struggle, a lot of pain he might have otherwise been spared, but with him had come Mângâiere and he still wouldn’t trade what they had together for anything or anyone else._ _

__Sometimes it frightened him how true that actually was._ _

__Unable to stop himself Kurt found himself leaning down, pressing their lips together with hunger._ _

__They were right together, even if nothing happened to be going right right now, but he wouldn’t let anything break them- wouldn’t let anyone break _Blaine_ , not Cooper, not Ian, not this damn destiny they had hanging over their heads and certainly not fear._ _

__Grappling for some control back Kurt pulled back, to the protest of every last nerve in his body. He was gratified when Blaine’s mouth chased after his lips, but they both knew they had to stop. They were having quite the honeymoon weren’t they? Congratulations on your recent nuptials. Here’s a territory war._ _

__Blaine snorted, laughing under his breath and Kurt realized he’d overheard the thought._ _

__“I’ll make it up to you,” his alpha promised and Kurt nuzzled the side of his neck._ _

__“Don’t keep me waiting.”_ _

__~*~*~*_ _

__Blaine and Adam finished painting Ian’s runes in silence after Kurt left, the silence heavy, the tension thick between them._ _

__Though he didn’t invade the other alpha’s privacy and look into his mind Blaine knew that Adam knew very well why Blaine had selected him to be the one to stay and finish with him._ _

__He had known Adam since they were children and Adam had fought with Blaine to destroy his own father; but Blaine had known even then that it wasn’t because he had supreme confidence in a boy of sixteen leading a band of rogue protégés to victory, or any great confidence in Blaine’s ability as a leader._ _

__He’d fought for Kala, because at the time he’d believed that she’d been one of the ones that Blaine’s father had taken. Learning that it was Cooper instead actually made it worse. He and Cooper were closer in age. Adam like all the other protégés had looked up to the Alpha’s sons._ _

__Blaine knew it would feel like being twice betrayed by the Andersons, knew that Adam would be tempted to wonder if anything good could come of allowing them continued power, and he knew for certain that he would be recalling Blaine’s misdeeds the year before which had cost David his mate and himself a year of exile._ _

__It was why he was guessing that the wizard’s fire guarding the treasure room in the crypt had judged him so harshly, and that meant he could not be allowed to go unquestioned. Unfair thought that may seem to both of them._ _

__“I was thinking about taking the sword.”_ _

__Adam speaking took Blaine by surprise but he lowered his brush, as ready to have this conversation dealt with as the other alpha apparently was. Adam wasn’t quite able to meet his eyes. He kept his gaze on the door he was painting in holy water, his mouth in a grim line._ _

__“The minute I saw it I knew what it was, knew what it could do and I wanted it. I wanted to run him through with it. Maybe you and me too.”_ _

__Blaine winced, but he hadn’t expected any different. He couldn’t blame Adam for feeling that way. But had he seriously intended to take the sword the fire would never have let him through._ _

__“Why didn’t you?” Blaine asked and he waited silently for Adam’s answer. When it came it surprised him._ _

__“When I was shot while we were fighting the MacTere I saw a battle. There were horses and knights, nothing like anything I’ve seen in this life… I thought it was a hallucination, some delirium brought on by my injury.” At Blaine’s wide eyes he nodded, adding quietly. “When I was in the fire I saw two men. One of them was a knight, and I could see through his eyes as if I had stepped into his skin. The other was younger, crowned and robed like a king. I don’t have words to describe him Blaine, only that I had never felt so much like I was small and in the presence of something holy. He told the knight to remember his promise, but it felt as if he were speaking to me.”_ _

__Neither of them spoke for a long moment, Blaine mulling over Adam’s words. He’d never paid as much attention to Ian’s lessons about magic as the wizard might have liked, but he knew that if Adam had seen a vision in the fire what it had to mean._ _

__He’d seen a glimpse of the past, just like he and Kurt had seen during their mating. If Adam was seeing glimpses of Arthur’s time he had to be connected to it somehow. He couldn’t be Arthur himself of course but then again neither was Blaine. The entire circle was supposed to return, to support the new king and do things right this time around._ _

__Somehow having Adam stand there and confess what he’d seen made it realer than it had felt while lying in bed, dreaming of a pair of lovers who had lived and died centuries before this one._ _

__That wasn’t even touching what he’d seen of Jeff and Nick that night._ _

__“You saw Arthur?” He asked his heart pounding and there was a tiny part of him that was relieved when the other alpha shook his head._ _

__“No. The king I saw wore a griffin emblazoned on his arms. He called himself Galahad.”_ _

__“Galahad?” Blaine questioned with a start and Adam nodded again._ _

__“Yes I, the knight that is, called out his name. That’s when he told me to remember my promise, and then he died. I can’t… I can’t describe how it felt. Only that losing this man is not something I-he, bore easily. I can’t imagine that he kept his promise. Whatever it was. ”_ _

__Adam had lowered his brush now. His teeth were biting into his bottom lip as he curled his hands into fists and he wrestled with the combined emotions of anger and anguish. Blaine waited._ _

__Finally Adam looked at him, determination making his gaze steely._ _

__“Blaine I didn’t swear in to this pack just to get a chance to avenge my sister. You would have let me do that anyway. I don’t stay here miles from the pack of my birth and the family of my blood for revenge. I stayed because from my first day at Dalton I knew that this was home. Julian took that away from all of us, but I’ve always believed that you could return it. I still believe that. You’re my Alpha, my friend, and I’ll follow you till our end…” Adam got close, until they were eye to eye and there was no hiding anything between them._ _

__“But I have to know that you meant what you said to me down there, that you will give her justice. Cooper did not want what happened to him but it happened and now he must pay. Promise me that he will.” The amber eyes of his wolf met Blaine’s as he waited and assessed the truth of his response._ _

__“I promise.”_ _

__It was a vow simple, unadorned, and the only thing Blaine could give him._ _

__With a shuddering breath of relief Adam sagged and Blaine pulled him into a hug. For a moment they just breathed harshly together, weighed by their promises, and held together by something even stronger: love._ _


	34. Chapter 32: Wrecked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *a brief interlude turned chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is originally the interlude I promised. After determining that certain plot points had to go here, I added this portion to the official chapter count as it's a good 6,000 words on its own and is too important to the story to be missed. So officially this story now has 34 chapters and an epilogue.

Lina did not wait for Kurt, instead she made her way to the Library. She had hoped to speak with him, get his help for what she planned, but after he and Blaine went to bed for the night she knew there would be no getting him alone without raising suspicion.  
  
She had to leave Westerville but she did not know how she’d do it or where she would go. The thought of leaving the safety of the pack and the comfort of what few family she felt she had left was terrifying but she did not see any other option. She was torn with indecision but time was ticking away, each second that passed like a weight around her neck. The vampires were coming and with them James. It was James –though she supposed she should become used to thinking of him as Cooper- whom she feared the most. She knew him. He would never be satisfied with killing Blaine and taking the crown alone. What James had always wanted, what he’d converted her and abducted two little girls over, was family and Lina had no doubt that if he knew that she and Benito were here he would let nothing stop him from taking them back.  
  
She wouldn’t allow that.  
  
Lina wasn’t going to pretend that he and the coven wouldn’t attack the pack regardless of his feelings for her but she could not deny that her presence only made it worse. If she left it might tip the battle in Blaine’s favor.  
  
Where she went she had always known that he would follow. It was why she’d known she had to kill him and failing that, she knew there was only one way to protect what she loved now. But how to do it? How to keep them safe and stay a step ahead of her mate while on the run… The danger to them on the run and in the open, she’d always known it was insurmountable, that they’d need sanctuary.  
  
 _‘Well, the pack is no longer safe and that is your fault’_ a familiar and insidious part of her head whispered. And she wished again that Kurt were there to calm her and tell her what to do. _‘Of course you do silly omega. James should be the one you lean on you know. Not Kurt. Kurt has a mate of his own to worry about.’_  
  
Lina pointedly ignored the voice, purposefully eyeing the books and journals that stocked the library shelves until she found what she was looking for. It was a journal, written long ago by a scholar in Blaine’s family in cramped fading penmanship. She sat, flipping the journal open by its leather binding and began searching for a particular section, one she’d read years ago when she’d first come to the pack.  
  
Blaine had been so welcoming to her, so kind. She would never be able to repay him but this could very well be a start.  
  
It was a petty thing to think that either Kurt or Blaine would cease to care for her simply because they were mated now, and she’d give such thoughts no more credit than they deserved.  
  
It was easy to say and almost impossible to believe, sitting rigidly in her chair, biting back the sting of tears as fear and uncertainty ate away at her. She wished Kurt were here to make her breathe. She wished-  
  
 _‘He can’t!’_ She thought, desperately dashing the runaway tear that had slipped down her cheek with the back of her palm. She sat up straighter, refocused on the words on the page. _‘He can’t make this go away. You must find a way to save yourself now.’_  
  
And if Lina remembered correctly the late Matthias Anderson had written the way.  


 

*

_ Brocéliande _

_Many common men of the age thought the forest bearing this name to be enchanted, bearing many magical creatures, plant life, and most infamously the residence of the veil that which divides this world from the next. The veil, manifesting in the form of a lake, was guarded by one of the queens of Avalon, commonly referred to in oral tradition as Lady of The Lake. My talks with Ian have given me to understand that her name was Nimue, and not Viviane as I have heard in other accounts. Ian is as always incredibly tight lipped when it comes to the Lady and all things to do with Avalon but he was forthcoming on a few points._

_Brocéliande, I am given to understand, as well as the lake itself sit directly on the fold between our two realms. Just as if one were to straddle the line between states, Brocéliande itself is in this realm and at once in the next. After Arthur’s death and defeat at Camlan his body was carried to Brocéliande by the enchantress Morgana who could not bear his passing on top of the loss of her son. She went to Nimue as a daughter goes to a mother and begged her to restore the fallen King and Nimue told her that of course she could not._

_It must also be noted that the Merlin himself was much distressed after Arthur’s passing, his fury threatened to unbalance the mortal realm. There are few recorded instances of Nimue journeying beyond the lake but on that occasion she did so, in order to lure him to a tree within her wood (see my research on drew draig) where she imprisoned him for many years. Upon freeing the Merlin she prophesied Arthur’s return and Ian so heartened journeyed back into the world renewed in purpose._

_Ian is closed mouthed on this point but it is my belief that the magic running so deeply in Anderson blood and the forces that are pushing us all to Arthur’s prophesied return- if indeed not the enchantments that made it possible- originated from Avalon (if not the Lady herself). Morgana’s arrival in the forest with Arthur’s body is the last known account of her and the location of Brocéliande became shrouded from mortal eyes shortly after Ian’s imprisonment in the tree. Brocéliande is now lost entirely to mortal men and has passed into legend. Even so, Ian is fond of whistling a tune that goes ‘The blood of Avalon can always find her when blood runs rivers and need is great enough’._

_As far as my research into the matter goes I hypothesize that the forest still resides somewhere In Brittany, most likely in woodland that is now called Paimpont. I also suspect, given the whistles of a wizard, that if any persons carrying the blood of Avalon were to find themselves in great enough need while running through Paimpont they might just stumble upon a lake where none is supposed to be._

**

  
  
  
  
Lina needed a place to run to when no place in the world was safe anymore; but maybe that just meant she had to run to a different world entirely. If there was any place out of her mate’s reach it was Avalon. She didn’t have the right blood herself but Benito did, she could pray that would be enough.  
  
“One would have to be truly desperate to try running there.”  
  
Ian’s voice startled her and she jumped in her seat with a yelp, her heart hammering. The wizard stepped out of the shadows and approached her silently and Lina wondered for a wild moment if he had been watching her the entire time, or if the shadows had simply spat him into being. She said nothing in response as he loomed over her, conscious of how easy it would be for him to prevent her escape from Westerville and how little she could do to stop him.  
  
Slowly Ian plucked the journal from her hands, bringing it up close to his pointed nose and appearing to read it for what was a long strained moment.  
  
“A mythical forest, maybe in France, maybe in Britain, hidden from mortal eyes... only true desperation would drive someone to take such a chance,” the wizard muttered as he slowly lowered Matthias’ journal. His eyes bore into Lina, all but peeling back her skin.  
  
“Are things truly so desperate?"  
  
The question quiet, sad, knowing turned her head. She slowly relaxed the tension in her hands, unclenching her fists as she met a gaze that far from threatening looked back at her with unexpected depths of compassion. Lina began to believe that Ian understood the necessity of what she was considering.  
  
“They’re coming,” she answered, her voice smaller and weaker than she needed it to be.  
  
“They are” Ian agreed gravely. “But this is your home Lina. You must know your friends will defend it, and you.”  
  
They would. She had seen it already. Seen Kurt bloodied and pushed to the point of exhaustion, had seen the bodies of pack mates and human police littering the grounds of her home; so much carnage and only more to come.  
  
“It is” she responded, equally grave. “I must do what I can to protect it.”  
  
“My dear girl there are other ways. There is no need to play the martyr.”  
  
“This is not a game to me” she insisted, finding strength in the spark of anger Ian’s words ignited. “You saw what he did to those poor children. You know what he did to me in order to bind me to him. There is nothing he won’t do to reach me and Benito. We are not safe anywhere else. Not even here. If I run he’ll follow and that will disrupt their plans. Benito and I will be safe in Avalon and Blaine can-” a pain sudden and sharp squeezed her chest taking her by surprise. It was cruel that the thought of James truly being gone still had the power to hurt her so. Lina refused to give in to such weakness. She couldn’t quite contain her gasp and there was no hiding the way she stumbled over her words but she blinked through it, batting back the sting of tears.  
  
“…Blaine can hunt him and end this.”  
  
Ian didn’t appear to have an answer for that and neither of them spoke for what felt like an age. Then, wordlessly, the wizard laid his weathered palm over Lina’s trembling hands and simply held them.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
The gardens were one of Adam’s favorite places to be at night. He went there after the talk with Blaine letting the smell of the plant life sooth him and the moonlight sink into his skin. It was all but full now. Tomorrow night would mark an entire month since Kurt had arrived and this entire mess with Balaurs coven had started. But that wasn’t fair, he knew even as the thought crossed his mind. The battle with Balaur had started long ago and Kurt was just a flimsy excuse to get close.  
  
He should be sleeping. He knew his body would need rest after only just recovered from the previous battle with another surely ahead but he knew that confined by the walls of his room and alone in the dark he’d drive himself mad; he’d close his eyes and all he’d see was Kala. Out here though, out here he felt alive, viral and strong, the urge to sing strong in his blood, only surpassed by the hunger for a hunt. He wanted a kill more than he wanted a second breath, couldn’t stop seeing his sister and the rage from spiking hotter. He lay in the garden tearing grass, struggling to breathe.  
  
The occasional wolf howling in song came to him carried on the wind and he listened quietly to their simple beauty, reminding himself that the world did still hold some of it.  
  
With the stars above him he could almost forget.  
  
A twig snapped, followed by a quiet curse and Adam perked up, his nose twitching, filling with the unique sent of his protégé almost as an after fact. He’d felt Chandler’s approach long before the wind brought his scent or he gave himself away blundering in the dark.  
  
“For someone with night vision you never did learn how to walk quietly in the dark.”  
  
Chandler huffed but did not otherwise respond to the remark, sitting himself down beside Adam’s form on the grass and folding his pale legs. On any other day Adam might not have let his eyes linger, might not have stared so at the way the moonlight turned his skin incandescent, the way his muscles pulled and shifted in his abdomen as he breathed, the way his eyes glittered in the dark; but the moon was high, his blood was hot, and tomorrow they might meet their end. He let his eyes linger and Chandler knew, his breath turning shivery beneath the older alpha’s focused stare.  
  
“I wasn’t trying to be sneaky.” Chandler finally answered him. “You’d have felt me coming anyway.”  
  
It was a bold thing to say and they both knew it. Maybe being his alpha-master was reason enough for Adam to have some vague sense of the younger lycan’s every move, to always have a part of him buzzing at the back of his mind and to always be eager to pull him in closer until he was all but surrounded by him; but it was far more indicative of a desire to mate than a desire to mentor.  
  
“Would I have?” He all but dared Chandler to tell him what he could barely stand to hear his own conscience saying. Of course. He was looking for a reason to snap, anyone wise would have been wary; nut never let it be said that Chandler Kiehl wasn’t an impertinent little shit because rather been be cowed by his masters dangerous mood the young beta nodded eagerly with a smug grin.  
  
“Of course you did” he gestured as if to say ‘what else’ and then lowered honeyed lashes and said in a more serious tone, “You want blood, don’t you?”  
  
Chandler’s words hit their desired mark. His hands clenched in the grass, bones aching for the shift as every bit of him yearned to shed his fragile shape. He _did_ want blood and he wanted it to be Cooper Anderson’s so bad he could all but taste it. But he couldn’t have that. Not this moment, and it was going to drive him out of his mind before the night was through.  
  
He was so close to shifting now he could feel the wolf moving under his skin. His muscles were beginning to burn with the strain of holding back. He growled a warning when Chandler reached to touch him and the beta’s hand paused over his quivering skin as Adam panted for breath. Then, with an all too familiar stubborn glint in his eyes, Chandler lowered his hand to Adam’s side, gently stroking his sweat slick skin.  
  
“Don’t,” Adam bit out through gritted teeth but the boy did not remove his hand and Adam could feel his pulse quickening, his head clouding with new urges now that that touch was sending heat curling through his stomach and Chandler’s scent was cloying in his nose. Holding in the wolf was the best anyone could ask of him, so he had nothing in him left to prevent Chandler from leaning over him, truly straddling him where he lay, and nuzzling against his cheek.  
  
Adam had to sink his nails into the dirt when he felt Chandler take his earlobe between his teeth tugging gently before releasing it to murmur lecherously in his hear, “There’s more than one way to hunt. Chase me. Run me down and make me submit to you. I promise I’ll make it hard for you.”  
  
Maybe it was the boyish way he giggled after the blatant innuendo, maybe it was how painfully young he smelled beneath all those other tantalizing layers making up his scent, but whatever it was it was enough to give Adam enough clarity of mind to push him off his chest and get as much distance between them as possible.  
  
“No, Christ Chan… you can’t say shit like that.”  
  
He paused a good yard away but was unable to go any further, frozen by the phantom stinging of hurt in his chest and unable to stomach the idea of hurting Chandler any more than he could the thought of taking advantage of him. He was trying to catch his breath when Chandler spoke again, voice laced with the pain Adam had caused him.  
  
“You know it’s funny. When I asked you to kiss me last night, I also remember asking to be treated like an adult.”  
  
Adam pulled on his hair with a frustrated groan before he turned back to Chandler, facing his aggravation with an aggravated snap of his own.  
  
“You’re not an adult. You’re my protégé and that’s all that will matter to anyone.”  
  
“That’s not the tune you were singing when you kissed me last night.”  
  
“That was a mistake! I can’t… Chandler we just can’t. What would your parents say?!”  
  
Adam had hoped the question might sober Chandler some but the youth just raised both brows in an incredulous expression and asked, “My parents? Have you _met_ them? My mom barely lets me say hello after a full moon before she’s demanding to know if you’ve jumped me yet.” When Adam’s whole face flushed red with mortification the younger wolf grinned but added more gently, “They know you’re the only alpha I’ve ever wanted, the only one I ever will want.”  
  
The words were too tempting. No one had ever said such a thing to Adam before, and even more dangerously nobody had ever meant them so earnestly as Chandler meant them. He felt such an overwhelming rush of affection well up in response that it almost forced him to sit, and underlining it was an intense feeling of possession that had no place between masters and their protégés.  
  
He knew how Chandler wanted to be seen and Adam could never deny his animal nature or the fevered want that threatened to be too much for him but what he felt for Chandler could never be reduced to simple desire. After all, he’d guided this boy from his awkward pre-pubescent stages into manhood and had been there through every phase in between. Adam had learned to love his infectious good humor and the incessant chatter that always seemed to accompany him, and he had come to admire his courage and the size of his heart. Adam couldn’t have been prouder of him, couldn’t have loved him more, and couldn’t help but want to take care of him.  
  
Normally that would mean keeping him at arm’s length, forcing an appropriate amount of distance until Chandler was no longer under his direct authority and allowing them both to sort out their feelings from a place of equality and maturity.  
  
Tonight, that just felt like wanting to hold him down and lick him from head to toe until he was boneless and quivering in his arms, fuck him until they were both sated enough to sleep.  
  
The moon talking no doubt, Adam was sure of it.  
  
“Wrong,” Chandler stepped closer, answering his unspoken thoughts and Adam wondered wildly when the younger man had closed the distance between them without him noticing. Chandler grinned again, smug as the preverbal bug in the rug. “And you should totally know that I want to take care of you too. That’s all I’d ever do if you’d just let me. I’m not some cub you know. I’m old enough to sleep with whoever I want. And I have by the way.”  
  
That wasn’t what Adam wanted to hear; not at all. He’d known of course. He wasn’t an idiot, a lycan teenager didn’t make it to seventeen without at least one full moon inspired accident and they were typically the sexual kind. By seventeen most of them had healthy and enjoyable sex lives and Chandler wasn’t any different but the idea of one of the other protégés, or god forbid one of the other alphas touching him now made Adam see red, growling low.  
  
He made to grab Chandler, grip him tight and insist that he let no one and nothing touch him but somehow the teenager had put space between them again, now standing a few feet away, facing the trees and looking back at Adam over his shoulder with an expression that was downright impish.  
  
“There’s not a problem with that is there?” He asked too innocently. “Because there’s no telling where any of us will be tomorrow night and I’m not spending this one cramped up and miserable indoors. I’m going for a run. If you’re smart you’ll catch me before someone else does.”  
  
Without another word spoken the younger wolf turned and launched himself towards the trees, shifting at the lightning speed on Chandler seemed capable of. Even as Adam barked for him to wait he was just a salt and peppered blur as he raced from the garden toward whatever the night held. It wasn’t long after that Adam heard him howl, his voice joining the other restless wanderers in song and Adam’s chest squeezed. He’d head so many like it in his lifetime, but Chandler’s voice called to him in the most startling way. So keen was his longing that he could scarcely breathe as he strained to hear every last note of the fading sound.  
  
Adam let out the breath he’d been holding in an aggravated puff and muttered a curse.  
  
Who the hell was he kidding? Certainly not either of them because a moment later he took off after Chandler, finally letting go of everything and letting the wolf leap forward.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
Without a doubt Blaine’s nerves were frayed. On the one hand he had exhaustion weighing him down from what seemed like days upon days of upheaval with the prospect of more hanging over his head; but on the other the moon was all but full and every muscle in his body was alive with need. He would have given a great deal to simply shed this skin and take to the forest for the night. His sensitive ears had already heard the beckoning voices of others in the pack who had done so and the yearning he felt was sharp and deep.  
  
Logically Blaine knew that he needed rest more than he needed to run, and being the Alpha not withstanding unlike others in the pack he had a mate to think of. Thinking of Kurt quickened his step and he’d breathed a sigh of relief when he’d finally reached his rooms. He was looking for Kurt as he closed the door behind him, wary when he didn’t spot him immediately upon the bed and relieved when he did spot him  on the floor near the wardrobe crouched over the bottom drawer.  
  
Blaine stared at the sight before him in confusion and fought back the urge to laugh. Kurt had pulled the sheets from the bed and made some sort of nest on the floor. They were still tangled around his legs even though apparently at some point he’d crawled over to ransack Blaine’s wardrobe.  
  
“You were taking forever,” Kurt offered in answer to Blaine’s questioning look, as if that explained why Blaine had found him on the floor going through his bottom drawers.  
  
“So you decided to raid my sock drawer?” Blaine asked, no longer hiding his amusement. He padded over to Kurt, drawn by the beautiful portrait he made of bare skin and long lines in the lamplight. For the first time since they’d left their mating bed Blaine allowed himself to sink into their bond, letting the rhythmic feeling of warmth and the low buzz of energy he felt emitting from his mate envelop him. It was a kind of comfort he’d never have imagined possible before, a peace without words, and he wouldn’t have traded the feeling or the man behind it for anything in the world.  
  
He touched his fingers lightly to the sensitive skin at the base of Kurt’s neck and watched Kurt’s lips curl into a slow smile.  
  
“I needed a distraction, and your sock filing system is subpar,” he replied and for a moment they just stared at each other, letting the ridiculousness simmer and trying not to be the first to break. It was Blaine. The laugh all but choked him on its way out so he gave up holding it in and then they were laughing together.  
  
Blaine let himself slide to the floor, sitting beside Kurt as they giggled, and sat for a while enjoying the feeling of their shoulders brushing together and joy bubbling between them. It was clean, it was happy, and he needed that on so many levels right now. The scent of Kurt’s wolf was thick around them, tell tale silvery grey strands of hair clinging to the linen sheets they sat on and Blaine began to suspect what was driving Kurt’s odd behavior. But he didn’t comment on it just yet, not wanting to disrupt the mood.  
  
Kurt was still adjusting to the idea of possibly carrying their children. He wouldn’t want to hear the suggestion that he was nesting.  
  
“Well believe it or not, socks aren’t that important a part of my daily life” Blaine said instead, explaining the haphazard way he tended to just ball them up and throw them in the bottom drawer; but Kurt didn’t look impressed.  
  
“You still have to live in the world Blaine. We’re not animals,” Kurt scolded and the stern look he pinned Blaine with was so achingly reminiscent of the days when they’d lived together in Kurt’s little house in Columbus, that Blaine’s heart ached with it- and he couldn’t do a thing about it, but sit there with all the longing and adoration he felt sucking out the air in his chest.  
  
Kurt could feel it. He knew and his eyes were intense as they held Blaine’s, their focus almost too much as he leaned in just enough to rest their brows together.  
  
The skin to skin contact was all at once cool relief and as warming as the glow of coals. It was what they’d needed every moment since they’d mated and what they’d need every moment of every day so long as they both shall live. Blaine didn’t have to wonder if he was alone in the feeling of monkeys leaping around in his stomach, the quick frantic beating of terror in his heart. They shared even that.  
  
Blaine’s fingers twitched when Kurt’s hand touched his. He was watching Kurt’s eyes as their hands moved, the softness in them, the gleam of playfulness, so that when he did look down it was to find his palm curled around a soft strip of leather and Kurt’s fingers curling over his.  
  
“I found this,” Kurt said, releasing his hands, and Blaine uncurled his fist to get a closer look at the item that Kurt had pressed there; but Blaine didn’t truly need to see it to know what it was. Though he hadn’t touched it in nearly two months the feel of the supple leather warm in his hands might as well have been sense memory and that was shameful.  
  
It was shameful because what he held was a collar, a dog’s collar complete with hanging silver tags with an animal’s name engraved on it and who to call should they be lost and found.  
  
Blaine gripped the metal tags between his fingers, turning them over as he tried to sort out the complicated emotions the collar had aroused.  
  
“You kept it.”  
  
A simple statement that both of them knew was loaded with meaning. Blaine’s year in exile should have been agony, should have been stiflingly restrictive, oppressive and isolating, and in all fairness the first month had been. In the first month he’d tasted what it was like to be caged and the pain had driven him to rage. He’d attacked the staff at the rescue trying to escape it and even though he wasn’t exactly proud of that now he knew there wasn’t a lycan living who would begrudge him the effort. Some would ask why he hadn’t killed. Some would rather have died than be chained up like that, cut off from pack and true companionship. Some didn’t make it through a month of exile. A year would have been a death sentence for many more.  
  
That was the conundrum. Because for Blaine it hadn’t been and he owed that to the man waiting patiently at his side, his gaze expectant as Blaine slowly turned the tags between his fingers, over and over again.  
  
“I would have stayed.” The admission surprised him. He hadn’t quite decided whether or not he’d make it, but the words coming out felt good and Blaine kept them going. “I was so _happy_ with you. Before you I was so lost, so alone, and then there you were, seeing me somehow when nobody else could, needing me as badly as I needed you. And I would have spent my whole life like that if it meant I could spend it loving you.”  
  
There were tears in Kurt’s eyes, unshed and not likely to, but wetting his eyelashes when he blinked and making the blues and greys of his irises glisten like jewels and all Blaine wanted to do in the world was to kiss him. Almost as quickly as the desire swelled within him Kurt’s mouth surged against his, wet and hot as he tasted Blaine’s mouth, a hand settling possessively on Blaine’s chest, his fingers curling when Blaine grasped his wrist and their tongues brushed; he answered Kurt in kind, thrust for thrust a smile curling in response to his mates low moan.  
  
He wanted to swallow that sound, drink in the blue of Kurt’s eyes, wide and dark as they were with lust. In that moment Blaine wanted to undo Kurt with the touch of his fingers, with the shallow gasp of his breath, and edges of his teeth, to remake himself by Kurt’s hands until they were made of each other and it was as exhilarating as it was horrifying.  
  
Between them they shared the same wildly beating heart, the same impulse to clutch the other in white-knuckled terror, as the rush of what they felt hit them like storm tossed waves. The only anchor to be found was in each other, gazes holding silent but not still as each observed the others every fleeting expression, searching for any reason to doubt.  
  
 _‘I’m terrified I’ll lose you, that I won’t make you happy, that you’ll regret choosing me, that I’ll bring you nothing but death and pain and one day you’ll hate me for it.’_ Blaine’s fear wrapped around them like cold hands and Kurt closed his eyes with a violent shiver.  
  
 _‘And I’m scared of the future, scared we’ll die, scared for those I love, scared that I’ll let you down.’_ Cold seeped into his chest, numbing wherever it touched and Blaine pulled Kurt closer to him, unconsciously seeking his warmth, burying his nose against his neck and rooting for it the place where Kurt's blood ran strongest and thickest. He breathed Kurt’s name as Kurt shuddered and gasped in his arms. Blaine mouthed the sensitive skin, overcome with the urge to lick and bite even as he panted for the breath to speak because he could not let another moment go without laying Kurt’s fears to rest.  
  
“Kurt, all I need, all I want, is for you to be exactly who you are.” Blaine paused, breathing hotly against Kurt’s quivering throat, watching raptly the way Kurt’s muscles moved as he swallowed thickly, and swallowed reflexively in reply. “I don’t need anything else.”  
  
Kurt reached for him, his soft palms framing the sides of Blaine’s face as he lifted his head. His mate's cheeks and neck were flushed with heat, his pupils blown, his lips bruised and parted and Blaine felt the beauty of him touch like a brand, hot iron pressed to his center, and the look in Kurt’s eyes said he felt the same.  
  
“I could never hate you, not having loved you like this,” Kurt confessed, leaning against him and Blaine just held him, letting the words shake him, humble him, warm him down to his very toes and banish all lingering traces of cold.  
  
It was true, the world could end the very next day but right then with the man he loved in his arms there was nothing to fear. Whatever happened would happen, but they would always have the gift of today. Blaine ran his hands over Kurt’s skin, running over the knobs and bumps of his spine as he tried to set all of it to memory. Kurt’s scent heavy and warm, his breath falling and rising against Blaine’s chest, the curve of his smile, unimaginably they were his.  
  
 _‘How did I get so lucky?’_  
  
To that thought his mate only smiled.  
  
“Will you do something for me?”  
  
Blaine blinked at the murmured question and nodded.  
  
“Anything.”  
  
Kurt leaned back and reached for Blaine’s hand, wordlessly dropping the dropped collar back into his palm. Blaine stared at it for a moment in confusion, glancing up to find Kurt staring at him with such a stark hunger that it made his breath catch, before he began to understand. That was when the Alpha of pack Westerville blushed red from his head to his toes.  
  
Kurt’s grin widened.  
  
“You said anything,” he reminded him pointedly and even as Blaine opened his mouth to object he was wagging a finger and saying, “I’ll never ask you to wear it in front of the others but tonight, here with me, I’d like it if you would.”  
  
Blaine swallowed but he didn’t look away, couldn’t, not with Kurt’s eyes pulling at him like that, wanting and begging in so many turns that Blaine’s skin was buzzing with the energy of it. There was only one real answer he could give (only one he’d ever want to give) and that was yes.  
  
Kurt touched the strip of smooth leather once it rested against Blaine’s throat with amazement, grasped the cool metal tag and traced the letters of the engraving and neither of them seemed to breathe for a long moment. Neither of them really had gods they worshiped, but this was their holy, each touch a sacrament. Kurt tugged, pulling Blaine forward by the metal grasped between his fingers and then they were kissing, languid and deep, kisses without end.  
  
This was not the crippling hunger of mating heat. This was joyful exploration, carefully plied exultation, and Blaine wanted to know every way to kiss Kurt, every last way to wring a sound past his lips, from the desperate clash of lips and teeth that they had known together during their mating, to the soft tantalizing brushes of lips and tongue that they were sharing now. Kurt pulled and Blaine lowered their bodies to the floor, Kurt’s back resting against the linens his wolf had pulled from the bed, their combined scents thick around them as they kissed.  
  
The touch of Kurt’s lips and hands was everywhere, winding Blaine up far more than he’d ever thought such simple things capable of and he whined against Kurt’s mouth as he ground their hips together, the shock of their erections touching eliciting a shaky groan.  
  
He might have felt embarrassed by it, if Kurt hadn’t moaned into his mouth as if their shallow thrusts weren’t the hottest thing he’d ever felt, if his feelings of _love want need more_ weren’t beating at Blaine like drums. Blaine smiled against his lips, rolled his hips once, and once more, exalting in the long languid shudder of Kurt’s body against his, lightly biting his shoulder to muffle a groan.  
  
 _I love you, I love you, I love you…_  
  
The thought had no beginning and between them it would never have an end.  
  
“God what you do to me,” Kurt panted, those big hands, lovely and sure, trailed over Blaine’s ribs and hips like someone admiring art, and when Blaine followed suit and began mapping his torso and hips with eager touches he moaned in encouragement. When they settled over the curve of Kurt’s ass and idly skimmed the cleft Kurt’s breath came out in a shivery huff.  
  
They hadn’t been together this way yet, not with Kurt’s heat spurring their first coupling but as desire swelled between them swift as rising tide Blaine knew in an instant that this was the way they wanted it now, the way they’d always love it best. But Kurt’s body being prepped for breeding had its benefits and not solely just being able to watch the way he bucked and writhed as Blaine slipped his fingers between his slick folds.  
  
“Blaine” Kurt cried after a minute of that torture and Blaine chuckled withdrawing his fingers and ignoring Kurt’s contrary whine.  
  
He shushed him as he trailed slick fingers over the rim of his hole and then slipped them inside, feeling the heat and clench of Kurt’s body, savoring the cry that he made. He didn’t have to ask if Kurt liked it, not with his pleasure radiating down their bond so vibrantly his own was humming with it. Blaine couldn’t help but stare at him in wonder.  
  
Kurt didn’t simply sit and take what Blaine gave him; he was alive under Blaine’s hands, shaking as Blaine fingered him, arching and driving himself against Blaine’s hand with confidence, savoring every bit of bite and sting as he sought his pleasure. Stunning didn’t cover it, would never cover it, and Blaine knew that he wasn’t going to last a second longer than it took to get inside him.  
  
He pressed as tight against Kurt as he could, burying his nose against his skin dragging in his scent between kisses, licking, and nipping wherever his mouth could reach. He worked his fingers in and out of Kurt’s hole, pushing them both higher even as they writhed and pulled striving for closer.  
  
“In me. Blaine _please_ ,” Kurt pleaded, setting his feet, tilting his hips, the needy rush so strong it rocked through Blaine like brick through a window.  
  
The world went white for a moment, Blaine slipping away as the wolf surged forward intoxicated by the sight scent and sound of his mate, called by the need burning so brightly within him. He was inside in one thrust, Kurt sucking in a sharp breath as his eyes went a shocking electric blue, the wolf inside ready to answer the brimming ferocity in his mate.  
  
It was brilliant, heady, to be poised on an edge like that knowing they could fall into that heat and come out unscathed, to fuck and rut until they were bloodied and broken and love every minute of it.  
  
But Kurt’s skin was soft beneath his hands, slick with sweat and flushed with heat. He seemed to like the cool touch of Blaine’s metal tags against his heated chest, a hand coming up between their bodies to grip them and tug. And Kurt’s tongue licking at the sweat on his skin was nothing but sweetness, the roll of his hips an even sweeter invitation. Their wolves receded as they moved together, leaving nothing but the weak and all too easily wrecked flesh of two men behind them.  
  
But as it was, they were quite happy to be so wrecked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 33 is coming as quickly as I can type it. As always I thank you for your patience and for sticking in there with this story. You guys rock. :) Hopefully this chapter was a much needed respite from the stress. And now, the real showdown begins.


	35. Chapter 33: Man On A Mission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slowness of updates. It's going to continue like that for the unforeseeable future what with things being so busy right now. It's going to throw off the chapter count but I decided to start posting things in parts as I finish them. That way you don't have to wait as long and the excitement from your responses will inspire me to finish parts quicker. :) This part here is about half of what I planned for chapter 33. Enjoy.

WORD GUIDE:

Máthair: the parent who gives birth in lycan unions. The term literally translated means mother, but it is used regardless of gender among lycans, though it is less common to hear in places highly populated by humans.

Matcă: The mate to the Alpha. Literally translated it means queen. It like the word mother is non gender specific in the lycan community, but has become less common the closer lycans are forced to live with humans.

~*~*~

_The witch was born on a night in May when light split the ceiling of the world open and arched across the sky in great bolts. No one who had lived in the village of Sath had dared to venture outside but the smith’s son, and all remembered how the light had come down from the heavens and lit his flesh afire from within turning him to dust. It would always be remembered as a night when the gods walked the earth. Many still swore to have seen the shadows of the great ones pass by their doors as they cowered in their homes._

_The babe’s mother was a young bar maid. She went by Abigale in the village, a beauty but a simple girl with simple desires and a genuine contentment with her station. The work in the inn was hard but the patrons tipped well for her services at the tables, and twice as well for a tumble in one of the rooms upstairs. She was no whore mind you, but she liked the occasional comfort of a man in her bed as much as the next woman and it seemed to her that gentlemen were always willing to lighten their coffers for pleasure._

_It was that very habit that had her confined to her bed the fateful night of the witch’s birth; for Abigale was the babe’s own mother and she’d been suffering the furious pains of childbirth as lightning rent the sky outside the inn. She recounted whenever asked how the child had kicked within her belly like an ornery goat as the lighting outside cracked and the shadows had danced on the walls without end. And then, accompanied by thunderous boom and a great flare of light Abigale had been visited by the visage of the Crone._

_The withered woman had touched a hand to Abigale’s protruding belly and whispered the child’s name and a string of omens in a language that her simple audience could not understand. They did understand the giving of the name however, and so it came to be that the babe was called Morgana._

_The innkeeper’s wife still recounted to anyone who would listen how the crone had disappeared with a horrible shriek and a swirl of black feathers, turning into a great raven with three piercing eyes of wicked green._

_Of course, none of the villagers had failed to notice that Morgana had hair as dark as a raven’s wing and eyes as green as the deep sea herself._

_In Morgana’s first summer, strapped to her mother’s back as she did the washing, the babe realized that she could call to the ravens that flew to perch on the roof and watch her, and further still that they would listen. By her third summer she was brave enough to ask her mother what the word witch meant, and began to realize why people treated her so strangely. She was five summers old when the man who had sired her appeared again and asked to take her away._

_Abigale barely looked up from where she sat, mending bed linens, as she murmured “Aye, perhaps that would be best”._

_That was when Ian took her away to Avalon._

_In the castle with Nimue Morgana did not exactly feel as if she belonged, for everything in Avalon was ancient and had a feeling of agelessness to it that made Morgana feel as small as a mite, but at least in Avalon magic was in everything and nothing feared her. Indeed, in Avalon there was everything to learn and a body could be limitless. It was in Avalon that Morgana first realized that one had only to learn the rules and magic could be bent to ones will. Once realized, one might never fear anything again, certainly not mortals with hateful stares and crueler words._

_The first time Nimue took her to the well to scry Morgana was eight, and the crone again came to her. The woman she saw in the well was weathered and bent, as wrinkled as an oak with hair as white as fallen snow but her eyes- the deepest green that Morgana had ever beheld- were ageless. The crone had greeted her, calling her Maiden._

_She foretold Morgana that she above all the daughters of magic had a destiny, that in her youth she would heal the sick and perform great miracles. She promised that Morgana would win the hearts of warriors and kings, and that one king in particular would win hers in return. She would come to bear the heirs of great empires, and thus Morgana would hold the world in her hand and shape it._

_“But remember well,” the crone had cautioned, “One day you shall be as I, your beauty faded and your back bent beneath time. All that you have loved will have returned to dust though your name and all that is done with it will live on.”_

_And all around them the stones had echoed with the name, as if the earth itself had murmured it to the sky and Morgana had whispered it herself for the first time._

_“I am Morgana le fey”._

_Morgana was no longer that maiden who had looked into the well all those years ago. She’d once thought that encounter a blessing, a benediction by a holy mother, but as the boat she rode across the great lake finally came to a halt on Avalon’s shores that dark morning after the battle of Camlann, Morgana was exactly as the crone had predicted she’d be: older, weathered, and far wiser. She knew the destiny in her name to be a curse._

_Nimue was waiting for her on the misty shore, her white robes immaculate, and her hair red as a flame flickering in the grey mist. The lady watched silently as Morgana labored with the boat bearing Arthur’s body, too tired and ill used to bother with magic as she hauled it out of the water with a heave and a panted curse._

_Her hands were rough and bleeding when she’d finished but she did not mind them or any of the other aches and bruises of her body, too focused on her task. Her mission was Nimue and when Morgana’s sharp green gaze met Nimue’s soft grey the world around them came to a still, one great power assessing another._

_“Hello daughter. What brings you to my isle?” Nimue’s voice was as lilting as the lapping waves of the lake water at their feet, as calm and unaffected as Morgana remembered it from her girlhood. She knew her to be a deceiver._

_“Play with me not Nimue. Camelot has fallen, Arthur is dead. Our son is dead.”_

_It was the first time Morgana had said those words aloud, or even allowed herself to think it since she’d felt Mordred torn from her, the words always sticking and clawed in her throat before she could push them out._

_“Aye, daughter, but was this not your wish?” Nimue asked softly, but Morgana heard the underlining scold clear as bells._

_“My son is dead!” Morgana screamed in rage striding toward the lake guardian with fists tightly clenched. In that moment all magic was forgotten. The young mother wanted nothing so satisfying as to strike the other woman, feel flesh buckling beneath her knuckles, and hear the crack of her bones. She would rend Nimue limb from limb with her bare hands if the other woman would but let her get close enough._

_“You dare call me daughter, you dare rebuke me, when you told me lies!”_

_Nimue did not shrink away from Morgana as the other woman screamed fury at her, inches from her face and well within striking distance. And yet there seemed a world between them as some invisible force held them apart, like a thin impenetrable wall of glass had been erected between their bodies, allowing them no closer._

_Morgana cursed and beat her hands against it as the woman who had been more a mother to her than her own just gazed sadly at her through it._

_“I have never lied to you Morgana.”_

_“You lie now!” The younger woman insisted beating at the wall, sending vibrant ripples through the air that distorted Nimue standing safely behind it. “You told me that he would love me, that he would choose me above all others. You told me that Guinevere would ruin him. You told me that I could save him!”_

_She hadn’t saved him. He hadn’t loved her. It was all lies._

_Arthur was dead and gone, their beautiful child, her Mordred was dead and gone, and just as the crone had warned her it would be everything she’d ever loved had left her. Her grief when Arthur had drawn his last breath had been so strong her magic had left a strip of her hair a grey so pure it was nearly white._

_With a pained cry Morgana gave one last mighty strike to the wall, magic crackling out from around her fists with blue light and smoke. Her heart throbbed heavy in her chest as she crumpled to her knees beside the boat in tears, her legs suddenly losing any strength to hold her._

_In the boat lay the body of Arthur, King of Camelot and High King of the seven lands. To Morgana he had been Arthur of the golden hair and gleeful grin, blue eyes the color of summer sky, silly rhymes and boundless imagination, Arthur of the endlessly giving heart and undaunted courage._

_She looked at him through the blur of tears, gazing upon his form, pale and still, and felt old down to her bones. Too old inside to feel any more rage and far too empty. She started when she felt a gentle touch to the crown of her head, the comforting stroke of a mother, and realized belatedly that Nimue had rid of her shield and closed the distance between them. When she spoke her voice ached with sadness._

_“He loved you above all things. It was you who led him to his ruin, not Guinevere.”_

_Lies; But Morgana had no more strength for fighting. All she had ever tried to do was keep Arthur from this fate, the fate that Nimue had seen in the well._

_“You said his marriage to her would bring him ruin, that’s what you said you saw,” She reminded her, the bite of bitterness sharp in her tone._

_“And so I did see it, and so it was.”_

_“Then why could I not save him?! Why is he dead… why did he forsake me when he was supposed to be mine?”_

_Morgana had known from the first time Arthur had opened his wearied eyes and looked into hers, that he was meant to be hers. Lancelot had brought her to his ailing king’s camp and all night she’d fought the sickness that had tried to claim him, battling back the hands of the dark one ever so eager to snatch his light from the world._

_She’d won that battle but had too much experience with men and their fear of magic to expect thanks for her sacrifice but Arthur had opened his eyes and where others had only shown her contempt he had shown her gratefulness. Indeed more than that. Arthur had called her a goddess, and vain though it might have been, with Arthur at least, Morgana had even felt it might be true. He and he alone always could make her feel as infinite as stars and as callow as a green girl in a single glance._

_“You cannot save what you also seek to betray Morgana” Nimue consoled, and Morgana grit her teeth, feeling the familiar sparks of rage spark again anew._

_“Even the Merlin could not protect Arthur from his heart. Arthur gave that to you, thus his binding to Guinevere could have been undone. Had your love proved strong enough, you might indeed have saved him. You might very well have saved each other.”_

_The words were a sudden and painful blow. Not the knowledge that Arthur’s mating with Guinevere could have been undone- death was an easy enough end all on its own and Morgana had always known that. She’d studied magic too long and hard not to know that even the magic of the wolf’s bite could be unwoven given the right touch, but she had been given to understand that it was only true for those who were not true mates, true in how their hearts called to the other._

_Although she had always said that Arthur was hers and gloated over the hold she had on his heart, a part of her had always feared, always believed, that Arthur did not divorce his wife because a part of him must love her. More than he had loved Morgana._

_Who could not love perfect Guinevere who had the world falling at her feet and begging to carry her train lest it drag in the mud? The queen had everyone fooled into thinking that she was a paragon when all along she’d been a faithless bitch. And it burned, like the very fires of hell, to be told that this was all her own fault when she might have fallen for Guinevere’s charade, might have let Arthur find his happiness with her if not for Nimue’s visions in the well and the kiss she’d chanced upon between Guinevere and Lancelot._

_Was she supposed to have stood aside? Forsaken and alone with no love to her name while the man who was hers put faith in a deceiver, and the man she’d loved as a brother betrayed them both? Was she supposed to have stood meekly by while Arthur drove the kingdom they had built together- long before the arrival of Guinevere the faithless - into the dirt, and was she supposed to suffer fate knowing that such a woman would eventually be the death of him?_

_Never! Even now the thought had righteous furry swelling within her._

_She could not, would not, stand for such a thing. Not with a thousand lives laid waste behind her and damnation to a thousand more. She’d vowed she’d take Arthur, take the crown, see Guinevere dead and see the kingdom, and indeed the world, put back to the way she felt it should have been._

_Once Morgana had hoped that he would eventually come to see it for the best even if he could not then with Guinevere and the Merlin blinding him to the truth. The truth that she was better than any woman in the world he might have chosen, the truth that she was worth choosing, worth defying her father for because she would have loved him so much more than Guinevere ever had if only he’d just believed it._

_She’d believed she could save him despite himself and had been unable to rest even for a moment until it was done because deep down inside, she’d always known it was herself she was desperate to save._

_After all, what was all the power in the world if nobody loved you?_

_She was Morgana le fey, the three eyed raven, the morrigane, the valkyrie, the mother, the maiden and soon to be the crone and none of it mattered because she was under all of it just a woman with a heart that bled and a mother with an empty womb whose child she’d pushed into the grave._

_If she was indeed the goddess some claimed her to be then it was true, the gods could weep. Weep Morgana did._

_Nimue’s arms came around the younger woman as she sobbed her broken heart into the sand. The lady’s tears fell more silently into Morgana’s dark hair as she murmured to her softly with gentle strokes of her hands._

_“Oh daughter. Did I not warn you it would break you, throwing yourself at the back of the world?”_

~*~*~*~

The sound of clanging, dull and repetitive, woke Noah Puckerman from an unnatural sleep. He knew it wasn’t natural because of the throbbing headache at the back of his skull, and the residual itching on the skin of his face left over from the cloth one of their abductors had shoved against his face before he’d passed out.

He and Burt had been stuck in that van for hours, possibly driving across the country or else driving around in impossible circles to keep any potential rescuers from tracking them down, Puck wasn’t sure which. But then finally they’d parked, only to be dragged from the vehicle and apparently drugged.

The first thing Puck did when he woke up was note the suns position in the sky. It wasn’t quite sunrise yet but he could feel the time coming, the moon already hidden by its brightness. It would be full that night and as such Puck should have been at his strongest, but whatever concoction had been in that coffee their captors had drugged him had to still be in effect because he was weak as a fucking kitten and gummy eyed to boot.

Blinking his eyes clear of gum Puck raised his head, peering blearily at his surroundings. He was in a large cage like structure, the bars made of wood rather than iron. As Puck squinted closer at them he realized that the cage was in fact made out of raised roots from trees that had seemingly lifted themselves to snare him and Burt just for the fun of it- but Puck thought it was more likely that magic had something to do with it. He really _hated_ magic.

The area they were in was very wooded, as well as hilly. Puck could see a mound sloping behind them as well as in front, almost as if a giant worm were inching under the grass like carpet. The area was also secluded if Puck’s ears could be trusted. The only nearby sounds he heard besides the distant clanging were of breathing, no cars no machines, no nothing. One of the breathers was Burt who was lying crumpled up in another corner of the cage, still out to the world. Puck army shuffled over to him as there wasn’t enough room in the cage to stand at his full height.

He checked the older man’s pulse and relief flashed through him when he found it easy and going steady.

“Thank god” he muttered under his breath, not knowing what he’d have done if Burt’s heart had quit on him, but it looked like Sue’s magic was holding up.

As if called, at that very moment the clanging ceased and Puck heard someone- young and male by the sound- huff a tired breath and then the sound of footsteps.

The man that approached them from the other side of a small hill was on the young end, just barely touching thirty by the smell of him, and a wizard. The smell of magic, a weird fusion of herbs and iron, all but secreted from his pores but it wasn’t the magic in his blood that raised the hair on Puck’s arm and made him think this guy was nothing but bad news (it wasn’t the cage either or the arranged abduction for that matter, though it really probably should have been).

It was the underlining and unmistakable stench of blood, of _vampire_ clinging to his skin. A growl rumbled low in Puck’s throat and below him Burt groaned and began to stir. The older man blinked his eyes open, going rigged at the sight of their unfamiliar surroundings and Puck pressed a finger to his lips, signaling him not to make any more sounds.

The wizard wasn’t alone. Behind him, hovering like a macabre parade float out of somebody’s twisted nightmare, were the two airport cops turned thralls that had abducted them. They were both naked and clearly in some sort of trance, hanging docilely on two giant wooden crosses, St Andrew style, their arms and legs spread out like the sacrifices they could only be. When Puck noticed that they weren’t tied or chained to the crosses but _nailed_ \- like this was fucking ancient Rome or something- the growling stopped, cut like strings as he stared in horrified silence, still as a deer caught in headlights. Burt wisely didn’t say anything, but judging by the horrified look on his face Puck doubted he was capable of speech in that moment anyway.

The absence of sound however seemed to catch the wizard’s attention because he glanced in their direction before guiding his floating sacrifices to a place that satisfied him and waving them down with a tired motion of his hand. They settled standing upright, one on either side of a long stone table at the opposite end of the mound.

The table was engraved with strange markings and covered in stranger tools and unlit candles. Puck was no wizard but he’d seen a movie or two in his life and he recognized an alter when he saw one.

This was not good. Even Burt seemed to know it, his dread cloying and sour in Puck’s nose. Weirdly enough the wizard was watching them now with a wistful expression, nodding his head quietly as if one of them had vocalized their misgivings aloud.

“It’s regrettable that you got caught up in this,” the wizard looked directly at Puck as he spoke in a condescendingly sympathetic tone. “But you’re here now, the die is cast and we must all play the hands we’ve got am I right?”

Puck grabbed Burt by the sleeve and dragged him backward as the wizard came up to the cage, kneeling to peer in at them.

“I’m Jesse by the way. It’s only fair I think, knowing the name of your executioner.” Burt sucked in a sharp breath and Puck must have made a face because Jesse nodded again, face furrowing only deeper in that offputtingly smarmy sympathy. “Yeah it’s going to happen. Sorry about that. I need blood and I was expecting to have a few more guests besides Mr. Hummel here to provide it.”

Blood magic? Puck didn’t know two things about magic or spells but it didn’t take a rocket scientist, and again almost anyone who had ever seen a movie knew there were types of magic better left alone.

“You can’t kill us,” Burt insisted rather futilely and Jesse tossed him one of his sympathetic looks and nodded, leaving the ‘yes I can’ said without a word spoken.

Puck growled, his voice was raspy when he finally managed to push words out, “Whatever the leeches want it can’t be worth what this kind of shit is going to do to your soul. There’s still time. Just let us go.”

“It worked out okay for Ian,” Jesse replied with a shrug. At Puck’s floored expression Jesse rolled his eyes.

“Open up your mind my small minded friend, humans only made blood magic into this big _thing_ , because they’re frightened of greatness. Water is one of the most powerful elements there is and blood, Pukerman, blood is the key to _life_. If you can master the use of blood then you can control life itself. Every great wizard knows that. Ian certainly does. Don’t think for a second he doesn’t have blood on his alter.”

Jesse was getting into a hard core villain monologue now, eyes gleaming and everything. Puck didn’t really want to hear it but two people were still hanging from wooden crosses about to have god only knew what done to them. He was terrified to even so much as breathe in the wizard’s direction, he knew crazy when he saw it and he didn’t have a death wish.

Even still, Puck gritted his teeth, glaring his refusal to believe that the Merlin had ever sacrificed someone’s life for more power even as Jesse’s lips spread into a slow smug smirk. The words he whispered next sent a chill down Puck’s spine.

“Did you really think a man could just rise from the dead of his own accord? That’s a tall order even for a king. Truth is mutt, somebody had to die for Arthur’s return, and probably a great many somebodies for all the good it did anybody. Ian failed, but you have my promise my friends. I will not. ”

*~*~*~*

Up ahead two brown coats were sniffing the wind, having halted on their trek north when one of them stumbled upon a half print in the mud. They circled the print, rooting in the muck and bramble for a hint of a trail and not far behind them, hidden in the brush, another wolf watched them.

It was a moment more but sure enough the two guard wolves abandoned their search for his trail and headed on their way, apparently unconcerned.

It would have been odd, given the high alert the entire guard seemed to been on, if not for the fact that the wolf who’d made the print was in fact Cooper Jay Anderson.

He was a son of this land, blood of its Alpha house and he’d been all of two years old when his parents first trotted him out into the forest to show him the secrets of his birthright.

He’d never be able to hide his progress in the wood completely but he knew how to use the land and the magic in his blood to his advantage. What those guards kept smelling when they came across his tracks was scent notes that screamed Anderson. The trouble with that was figuring out which Anderson had walked there and with Blaine being such a busy bee the last couple of days, no one was likely to run the risk of raising the alarm over what appeared to be a fading scent that could very well have belonged to him.

For one unfortunate omega with the right blood that had proved fatal. Steven Evans had not seen or smelt him coming until it was too late and neither would today’s prey. Cooper hadn’t expected the complication of Sebastian abandoning the plan. It had always been a possibility, however, and Cooper was sure that even if Blaine did know that he was alive they were past the point of it mattering. All the right pieces were in place and Blaine had no way to see the true threat coming until it was too late.

The reason Cooper had risen before the others in Balaur’s envoy and rushed to Westerville was a slim legged, tricolored she-wolf that was even now slipping her way through the trees. He’d nearly missed her given that she was wearing some sort of cloaking charm, but there was nothing in the world that could hide her from his eyes when he desperately wanted to see her. For once in his life he was thankful for the bond of love, the unpredictable and unknowable depths of power attached to mângâiere.

Even through the blur of the charm she looked just as he remembered her. Long and lean, she was a creature of such grace it made it hard to swallow. His heart kicked hard in his chest as her scent filled his nose and he felt what was left of their stunted bond begin to pull between them. Even though the scent of her made his teeth tingle and every muscle in his body coil, he pulled away, erecting a wall between his consciousness and hers so thick there would be no reaching him even if she’d wanted to try.

He wanted to touch her, to relearn her after years of separation, but he knew better than to think she’d accept his return gladly. She was skittish, clearly on edge as she paused near where he hid in the brush, her ears perked to catch the slightest sound.

Cooper’s eyes latched on the scruff of fur she held clasped between her teeth, and the wriggling ball of cub that hung from it. The first sight of his son almost cracked the wall he’d put around his mind, every last bit of his mind wanting to reach for the boy that Lina held.

Imagine it. _He_ had a son. A black furred little cub with blue eyes just like his who had no idea he even had a father, let alone a father who loved him as much as Cooper did. Well to be fair, they’d never met, but some things didn’t need checking. Cooper had always known two things. He loved Lina Medici and he might possibly have been the worst thing for her if not for the fact that he’d do anything to get back the family he had lost.

He’d known she’d run as soon as she knew he was coming for her, just like last time. He’d messed up before, so he didn’t blame her for it- even the trying to kill him part, because he couldn’t say he wouldn’t have killed her eventually if she hadn’t- but that was over now. He’d found the grail and he was better. He could make things right again and they could all be a family together the way they should have been from the beginning.

She wouldn’t believe him at first but she’d see it his way eventually. She always had before.

*~*~*~*

Lina did not sleep that night. Before the dawn, before the sun had even risen over the horizon she felt a strange sensation come over her, the sudden and complete knowledge that her mate was near and coming nearer. She woke Benito, urging him to take the shape of his wolf with a gentle stroke down his spine. The boy knew that there was something odd about their sneaking away in the dark and he was reluctant to leave the familiarity of Blaine’s home but she kept him quiet, promising him that they would return when it was safe. She had no idea when that would be, but she hoped for her son’s sake that it was not a promise she would have to break.

Sneaking past the extra patrols that Blaine had placed within the forest might have been impossible if not for the stone pendant she’d slipped around her neck before her shift. Ian had given it to her the night before, explaining that it contained a powerful cloaking charm that would shield her from enemies so long as she wore it, and Benito too so long as she was holding him.

She carried her cub by his scruff as she trotted through the woods, careful to keep quiet and well upwind of passing patrols because their keen noses and ears were still dangerous to her even if the pendant blinded their eyes. Having to be so careful her journey through the wood took close to an hour, the sun having risen by the time she reached the place that Ian had designated her to meet her ride.

The tree line faced a lonely stretch of highway. In one direction was nothing but field and forest on either side, in the other was a hill and at the bottom was the subdivision she’d called home for the last three years. Parked on the side of the road was a silver Toyota and in the driver’s seat was an anxiously waiting woman.

Spotting Mercedes Jones Lina relaxed her shoulders, relieved that Ian had kept his word and gotten her message to her coworker. The police had barricades all over Annehurst so there was little hope of getting in for long enough to grab supplies. Needing their wolf shapes to travel quickly and lightly she hadn’t been able to bring any of the things she’d kept in their rooms at Blaine’s house. They had no money of their own without taking it from the pack fund, something Wes would quickly notice and be able to track, and they needed to cover a number of miles in a very short amount of time.

For some things human technology was just best and Lina knew of only one human she trusted enough to ask for a favor of such magnitude.

“There you are,” Mercedes said as she got out of the car to greet them. She’d all but sagged with relief when Lina had emerged from the trees with Benito in her arms. “Two police cruisers have passed by here in the last thirty minutes, we’ve got to go.”

She thrust a pile of clothes into Lina’s arms, trading her Benito who began to whine and kick as they were separated.

“Hey now, no more of that, Aunt Cedes has got clothes for you too little guy,” Mercedes crooned as she carried him to the open car door and leaned down to root in an open bag on the front seat.

Lina slipped on the sun dress and panties that Mercedes had provided her, as well as the strappy leather sandals and then went to help wrangle her grouchy petulant cub into the socks and shoes that Mercedes was trying to get him to wear.

“No mama! They itch. I don’t wanna wear stupid clothes! I wanna go home!”

“Benito Medici, hush that fussing” she scolded, holding his little fists between her hands and looking him sternly in the eye. She felt his confusion, his fear; hurt battering at her across their bond and her heart ached. She wiped his tear stained cheek with her thumb and willed him what comfort she could. “I know that you are scared piccolo but I’m here with you. All is well so long as we have each other. Ci?”

It took a moment but after nuzzling his soft cheek against her palm with a whimper he nodded, smiling bravely for her.

“Ci mama” his tiny voice replied and her chest squeezed.

“There’s my brave boy. Into mama’s arms now.”

He clung like a barnacle and Lina held him tight, carrying him to the passenger side door. Mercedes rushed around to open it for them and she thanked her. When she was sitting with the door shut behind her with an ominous thud it finally hit her. She was leaving Westerville and the pack behind her in the vain hope that she’d not only be able to reach Avalon before either her mate or her family caught up to her, but in the hope that she’d find it at all; and she was dragging Mercedes along with her.

A rush of misery welled up within her, chased quickly by panic as she blinked back tears.

“I’m sorry Mercedes. I don’t know what Ian told you, but you shouldn’t- he’ll kill you. I never should have asked, I never-” Mercedes took her hand gripping it hard as her bungled apology died between them.

“Well your wizard scared the shit out of me appearing in my living room. After he convinced me not to brain him with a baseball bat he told me what amounts to you having a pretty nasty ex, a bad news family, and that you needed to get out of the country for a while.”

Mercedes put the car in drive and pulled away from the edge of the road before shooting Lina a reassuring smile and squeezing her hand one more time.

“Don’t sweat it honey, a ride to the airport is the least I can do.”

She looked carefree with the early morning light streaming in through the window, framing dark curls and casting golden glow over her skin, a gem in a world full of mud. She’d only ever been kind to Lina, so sensitive to her moods and patient with her where others had only thought her broken and odd.

What a way to repay her, by delivering her to her death.

“He’ll hurt you” her voice was small, but even so she covered Benito’s ears as she found the courage to whisper the words. “You may never even see him coming.”

Mercedes kept her eyes ahead on the road but Lina saw her hands tighten on the wheel. Her voice was calm though as she replied, “yeah. He told me that too.”

~*~*~*~*~

_On a road of little account on a day of even less, a knight met his doom at the hands of someone more powerful than he, his life claimed in vengeance with the name of his gods still on his lips._

_In a tower in Avalon Morgana le fey sat day after day staring into the eye of the world, searching for the spirits of those she had loved and lost. She scried with the obsession of a woman possessed, ignoring the cries of worshiper’s like that desolate knight brought to her on the wind. She may have let a man or two call her a goddess in the past but only fools thought their gods perfect._

_True perfection was the meeting of heaven and hell, the sting before the honey, bliss made all the sweeter for the initial bite of bitterness; she’d tasted perfection on her lips, held it cradled against her breast and knew better than most how perfection was fleeting._

_But Morgana unlike most could peel back the skin of the world, peer into the eyes of death herself and find what was lost, and so she sat day after day, hour after hour, kneeling before her alter._

_Nimue left her to it, having the wisdom to know that there was no dissuading the younger woman from her task. At the end of each day the lady would come to Morgana’s tower with food and bath water and nurse Morgana’s exhausted body back to strength. She would contemplate as she soothed the marks of death littering Morgana’s skin- the almost certain knowledge that if the woman continued down this road death would claim her and not give her back- with an increasingly heavy heart._

_The Lady of The Lake was not one to cry against what fate willed, what the Mother willed to be, but she had known Morgana from a maiden. She’d held her tenderly when nothing but a sapling and tended her growth. The lady had loved so many children such as Morgana and lost them to mortal plights one after the other._

_And for all those losses Nimue had never let jealousy twist her or the love she hid away in her heart for Ian- even after centauries, even when he found comfort in arms that were not hers- for she knew jealousy to be a poison, how even if it were righteously earned jealousy would still wrought decay. It was a warning that Morgana had not heeded._

_By then Nimue had become used to watching her charges throw her warnings to the dust. She was sick with watching their bodies return to it._

_She had warned Ian what would become of putting too heavy a yoke on Arthur, she had warned him of forgetting that he himself was born of mortal flesh, and had advised him to know and honor the strengths of his humanity as well as its limitations. She had not been heeded there either._

_Outside in the lands of men the dark god Elrik walked unhindered: war raged, petulance festered, and men blackened their souls in dark pursuits. Even Ian was susceptible to Elrik’s seduction, for grief was one of the dark one’s strongest hooks and Ian’s grief was great, the lengths to which he was willing to go to exact vengeance for it even greater._

_The land was choking on blood, the cries of worshipers brought across the lake to the Lady herself on the wind and Nimue’s heart ached._

_In a forest, seemingly of no account, at the edge of a lake of seemingly even lesser, a desperate man fell to his knees, still covered in the blood of his last kill._

_“You lied to me! He wasn’t supposed to die. Nimue!”_

_He raged until he fell into an exhausted sleep, his gods silent._

_So many broken hearts. So much pain. All the great queens had agreed that the mortal realm must be left to burn and fade to ash as the Mother willed it. They had tried to save it but death must be allowed now what it was owed. They would come when the fires were banked to blow away the dust and bring spring again, unhindered by mankind. It was for the best._

_She had never been a jealous spirit, but she could not help but feel death had taken too much from her already._

_It was a dangerous thing to crave, possession of another. All life belonged to the Mother and it flowered and withered at her leave without bias, from the smallest to the greatest. To feel robbed was madness._

_But then again, Nimue thought as she looked down upon the man sleeping at the edge of her lake with bright love, darker possession, and a heart full of things that had no place in a priestess, the world had already gone mad._

_That morning when she came to Morgana’s tower she did not come with tenderness or gentle pleas to halt her scrying for a day, but with iron purpose and fire behind her eyes._

_Morgana raised her chin defiantly at her, tensed for a battle and assuming incorrectly that Nimue had come to put a stop to her mad search once and for all._

_“Find Arthur,” Nimue ordered and Morgana’s mouth dropped open in genuine shock._

_“But before you do I must know what you are willing to do Morgana to set this to rights.”_

_“Anything! I would do anything to undo-”_

_“You cannot undo! You cannot change what evil you have brought into the world and what scars it will leave behind it. Do not think you can!” Nimue’s eyes burned making the younger woman shudder but Morgana was never one to hang her head, even when shame writhed inside her like a nest of snakes._

_“Aye” Morgana hissed in agreement through clenched teeth. “I cannot undo it, but I would make it right.”_

~*~*~

Stacey Evans was already awake at first light when the bellman made his round up and down the hall in the omegas quarters, ringing the bell for morning duty. She’d not been the only one who’d had trouble getting to sleep the night before but she suspected her reasons were much different. The others were all scared because the vampires were coming and the Alpha had warned them there would be fighting. It wasn’t that the thought of vampires in the forest didn’t scare her, it terrified her, but it was hard to concentrate on anything-even fear- when she couldn’t escape the feeling of grief that wouldn’t let her be.

Two mornings ago shortly after morning call, when her brother had been on his way to his assignment in town, he’d been attacked. Stacey had felt his pain, had felt his shock and betrayal even as teeth and claws had torn into him and then the piercing bite of cold as he was torn from her and their bond severed. 

Even now, with Stevie curled up next to her on the bed (she’d crawled in with him, unwilling to sleep alone) she felt only a devastating numbness where her brother’s vibrant aura used to be and it left her chilled all over.

She didn’t understand. Every last instinct she had was telling her that her brother was gone- truly her heart was grieving his loss without her say so- and yet he was right there, in one piece, exactly as he had always been minus their connection.

She’d said as much to Quinn before she’d taken Stevie with her back to the omega wing and Quinn had told her she just had to give Stevie time. People responded differently to trauma and sometimes they closed themselves off from others.

Stacey shivered, wondering how awful the attack must have been to make Stevie pull so far away from everyone that he might as well have been dead to them all; even her.

Across the room Maddie and Ivan were stirring, shifting from their wolf shapes back to two legs. Like Stacey and Stevie rather than sleep in separate beds they’d elected to pile into one, taking comfort from being close together and in their strongest forms. Even still they both looked tired and anxious as they shuffled around the room getting ready for the day.

It was a big day. Stacey was to report to the head cook Madame Bedel and she was to bring Stevie with her for placement.

“You better get moving Stacey,” Maddie paused to say as she buttoned up her uniform.

The alphas might have found the navy skirt and billowy white blouse a punishment, but Stacey had always found the uniform as well as the collars they were required to wear reassuringly constrictive, like being held firmly by two hands.

Being so buttoned up was a symbol of their subservience to the stronger wolves in the pack and highlighted their vulnerability (which was very fashionable in an omega). They were not prepared to shift at a moment’s notice, not ready to hunt at the first sign of prey or at the ready to meet a challenger. They were chained by black buttons and fancy collars, saying with their bodies that they recognized the superior strength of their dominants and so understood that everything they received was at the benevolence of the strongest, whether it was their food or their protection.

Normally Stacey happily kept a ‘beauty is pain’ attitude about the whole affair, but it was harder to dress today, knowing that she would need her wolf and knowing she’d be hindered by them. But that was the whole point, she reminded herself as she shook Stevie and rose from the bed, they would have to have faith in the alphas. Even still Stacey was privately glad that she worked in the kitchens and would be mostly tucked away from everything with an easy escape route.

Stevie groaned over on the bed, blinking slowly and dazedly at his surroundings. He didn’t appear to recognize where he was, or even who she was, for a moment. He just stared out into space all foggy eyed and distant, he might as well have been a statue. He’d gotten quieter and quieter last night, and far less cognizant as the hours had worn on so it wasn’t a total surprise but she had still hoped he might be different in the morning. No such luck it seemed.

Stacey bit her lip against the stab of grief that went through her chest, and told herself it was unfair to resent his coping methods after what he had most likely been through. Just thinking about it made the young omega shudder, going cold down to her core.

“Come on Stevie, we can’t be late,” She urged him and he turned his head to look at her blankly. After a moment he nodded woodenly and Stacey shivered. It was unfair, given what he’d been through but she couldn’t help but feel like Stevie was no longer her brother, that someone had replaced him with a life sized puppet, pulling his strings.

~*~*~*~

Finn had survived the bite, though it was a close thing. Conversion while healthy was painful enough, conversion while wounded was slower, trickier and Rachel hadn’t dared move him till she was sure but she hadn’t wanted to risk staying in the wizard’s house longer than they needed to. Hokar had tasked his niece to care for them and the young female beta had graciously opened up her home to them.

The afternoon before Finn had finally woken from the magic induced sleep of the newly converted, any memory of the agony he’d suffered the last twenty four hours erased. Rachel knew they really shouldn’t stay in Dayton because whoever had organized the abduction in the first place might have sent more thralls after them but she’d needed Hokar’s help and Dayton’s Alpha had proved very reluctant once news broke about the Governor declaring Westerville in a state of emergency.

They couldn’t walk the miles between Dayton and Westerville because Finn and Carole wouldn’t be able to keep up and they’d be vulnerable if somebody really were tracking them. She’ demanded an escort from Hokar- who had almost busted a blood vessel before she reminded him of the stakes and Blaine’s likely reaction to anything happening to her precious cargo- and finally his niece had offered up herself and use of her car to end their stalemate.

“Perfect” Rachel had smiled winsomely at him, ignoring the Alpha’s furious glower.

Sunshine (Sunny as she insisted) was certainly of a friendlier disposition than her uncle, which made the trip from Dayton to Westerville for Rachel and her charges far more pleasant than it might have been. Finn and Carole got the back seat and Rachel insisted on driving- Sunshine had rather ridiculously thought that ownership of the vehicle made her the best driver- so that left Sunny in the passenger seat as lookout.

There wasn’t any trouble on the way, either from more thralls or more wizards but when they entered the town of Westerville they encountered a traffic block the likes of which Rachel had never seen before. Roads were blocked off and police where everywhere. Rachel tightened her hands on the steering wheel as the line trickled forward, officers stopping each entering or exiting car to peer inside.

“That was a police copter,” Finn mused with wide eyes as a helicopter flew over them. “Did something happen?”

He’d remembered everything up to passing out in the house in Dayton so luckily he’d been as eager as Carole was to follow Rachel’s lead and get to Westerville, but he’d not been awake to hear any of the news reports on Sunny’s television.

“They’re looking for lycans. There was a massacre the day before yesterday. Over forty dead they’re saying” Carole answered quietly from the back, the worry heavy in her voice and Rachel knew she was thinking about Kurt and what may or may not have happened to him.

“Wait a minute I thought this Anderson guy was supposed to be good. Why are we going there if he could do something like that?!” Finn demanded to know and Sunny eyed Rachel hesitantly, clearly deferring that question to her.

“I don’t know what your qualifications are for ‘good’ Mr. Hudson, but being human you’re better off with Alpha Anderson than you are anywhere else. Blaine doesn’t kill just to kill,” Rachel assured him and Finn scoffed in reply.

“Tell that to the forty dead.”

“There are two sides to this you know!” Sunny hissed back, every line in her body tensed as they inched toward the waiting policemen. “Humans kill us too. It never even occurred to you that he might have had a good reason, or that he might not have done it at all did it? You just heard some wolves attacked humans and that was all you needed?!”

Finn had the grace to look shame faced for a half a second before he bristled.

“Well you said he owns those woods. Who else would it have been?!”

Sunshine growled, flashing her teeth at the older man and Finn paled falling silent even as his mother took his arm and squeezed, shaking her head just in case he’d had the thought to say anything else.

“You’re an idiot. But you’ll see soon enough how it is to be one of us,” Sunny muttered under her breath and at Finn’s affronted and confused expression Rachel shot her a warning glance.

Carole hadn’t wanted to tell him immediately. It would take a month for Finn’s wolf to come into full being and Rachel supposed the mother wanted time to break it to him gently. She personally thought that was a mistake but Finn wasn’t her problem after she dropped him and his mother safely on Blaine’s doorstep. She’d be glad for that, gladder still to see Noah again.

If they made it that was, because Finn didn’t know it yet but Sunny was right. Humans didn’t ask too many questions when it came to neutralizing lycan threats. The swat teams the Governor had called in might not be able to move on the woods, not with it being a safe zone, but they knew not all lycans chose to live day in and day out in their wolf skins. Most didn’t. Most lived among them, trying not to get noticed, and in their case driving silver ford convertibles attempting to look nonchalant.

~*~*~

He was dreaming… _he knew that. It was one of those dreams that did not feel like a dream at all, the taste of copper and brine real and thick on his tongue as he stood in the middle of a strange room staring at blank grey walls. The room he was in was cold and dark, the only light coming from a single window which was too high to reach. He could hear the sound of someone sniffling in the dark, the voice young and terrified, but he couldn’t make himself turn and look._

_Somewhere outside the room a door slammed and his focus shifted to the door of the room. It was made of heavy steel and was tightly bolted shut. There was another window in the door, the glass thick and plated. The light in the hallway beyond it was a sickly florescent glow. It flickered as doors continued to bang and feet marched by._

_Outside the door a man’s torso flashed through his field of vision. The man was wearing a blood splattered lab coat and hauling a boy of ten down the hall who was screaming at the top of his lungs when not furiously biting and kicking. The boy’s struggling hands bunched up the sleeves of the man’s lab coat and for a single moment the skin of his forearm was revealed and there etched in black ink was a coiled snake._

_“Can you hear me?” a voice whispered behind him in the dark and finally he was allowed to turn. There in the center of the room was an iron framed bed and sat upon it was a small girl. She was in a wrinkled hospital gown, her knees pulled up to her chest and her long hair hiding her face from the horrors outside the door. But then she lifted her head to stare right at him, the curtain of her hair parting just enough to reveal a tear stained face and eyes that made his heart stop._

_The little girl clenched her hands into fists as another round of screaming and banging began and whimpered deep in her throat, her body trembling from head to foot. And then heavy footsteps marched toward their door, a shadowed silhouette appearing in front of the window and the little girls fear spiked so sharp the dreamer’s mouth flooded with the taste of it- copper and brine- as her eyes grew wide as plates and she flung herself towards him, reaching with outstretched hands._

_“Daddy help me!”_

_The door opened with a bang and the girl’s terrified screaming burst in his eardrums…_

Kurt woke with a start and lurched up in bed with a shout.

“Kurt?” Blaine was leaning over the bed, trying to pin Kurt as he thrashed about, struggling to get out from beneath the blanket.

Waking up so suddenly had left him with a sense of vertigo, the room spinning around him and his body feeling strangely disassociated with gravity. It made him want to throw up.

He finally managed to get his feet planted firmly on the floor and leaned over to put his head between his knees. Blaine touched him gently, rubbing his back as Kurt struggled for breath. Needing something to hold onto Kurt grabbed for his nearest hand, clutching it tightly and Blaine didn’t remark on it, even though Kurt’s grip had to be hurting him.

“Bad dreams?” Blaine asked and he didn’t seem surprised when Kurt nodded. With what they had to face ahead of them, Kurt supposed it wouldn’t be. Blaine had clearly been up for a while and had left him to sleep. Just as he had yesterday and just as he had then Kurt found himself wishing he hadn’t, this time if only because it meant less time for his sub-conciseness to churn up nightmares.

But strangely, his dream hadn’t been about vampires, as he might have expected. It hadn’t really felt like a dream at all. He’d gone to bed with Blaine, surrounded by love and comfort only to have it shattered by that-

Whatever it had been.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Blaine asked, picking up rubbing Kurt’s back again with his free hand. A simple offer, no strings attached, with the understanding that if Kurt didn’t feel like talking that was okay, but he was there if he needed it.

Kurt squeezed the hand he held and brought it up to his mouth, brushing the palm gently with his lips before releasing it.

“No” he murmured. And he meant it. Blaine had more important things to worry about this morning. They both did and Kurt had already slept later then he had planned. And what was there to talk about anyway?

He’d had a creepy nightmare about a girl he’d never met- who probably didn’t even exist for that matter- being tortured in a facility by guys who oh so coincidently bore the same insignia Dagan and Blaine’s father had worn. It was obvious what his subconscious had done with all the horrible things he’d seen yesterday in Brittany’s mind and there was no need to worry Blaine and let him beat himself up about it just because he’d had a silly nightmare.

When he’d stood, waved away Blaine’s concern, as well as his less than truthful insistence that there was time for Kurt to sleep more if he wanted, to see about showering for the day Blaine’s worried gaze followed him. It wasn’t until he was standing beneath the spray, letting the heated water unwind muscle and wash away the lingering tension in his shoulders that he finally put together what it was about the girl’s eyes that had made his pounding heart stop, even within the dream.

It was the distinctive greens and browns, sharp and clear that tangled in her irises, their whites glistening with tears that trailed down olive toned cheeks. He’d seen them not a minute ago on the face of his mate, watching him with worry.

Something in his gut went tight and Kurt curled his fingers like claws in response, the subconscious movement drawing his attention to the fact that quite without realizing it he’d brought his hands to his abdomen and splayed them flat as if he could stop his insides from churning.

With the feeling of wrongness crawling over his skin came the faintest hint of copper at the back of his throat, like an aftertaste that refused to wash away and he remembered how she’d sounded, calling for her father. His gut clenched tighter.

He instantly dropped his arms, growling low as he grabbed for the soap bar muttering beneath his breath.

“Well fuck you too subconscious.”

*~*~*

Rachel, her two charges, and their companion did eventually make it through the police blockade but it was a close call. Finn being so newly converted meant his hormones were out of balance. His nerves had been so combustible they could practically feel him rattling as they inched closer and closer to the policemen.

“What happens if they figure out you’re lycan?” He’d asked her, his long frame shrinking into his seat as his eyes stayed glued on the long line of police cars ahead.

“Just act natural and they won’t.” Rachel assured him. Because if they did, it would be very very bad.

When the officer had gestured for Rachel to roll down her window she’d complied. She’d answered all his questions with a bright innocent grin: they were coming back from camping trip, no they didn’t know anything about the massacre, yes it was terrible, yes they’d be careful.

Finn had been in such a state of apprehension that he was about six seconds to bursting out of his skin and the officer had definitely noticed.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s been sick,” Carole thought quickly on her feet. “He had a fever just this morning, it’s part of the reason we cut our trip short.”

They’d all held their breath until Officer Brett told them to make sure they got Finn checked out and let them on their way.

Once they were through the barricade the drive to the highway bordering the forest was short. It took Rachel a couple of tries to find the turn off into the woods, it was a tiny dirt road overgrown with foliage and easily missed by the human eye. Even Rachel’s lycan eyes seemed to slide over it without seeing it at first and she couldn’t help but feel that was probably intentional. Stuff like that usually had magical origins.

There were a lot of rumors about these woods and the Anderson Alpha’s, a lot of old stories that Rachel’s fathers had been fond of retelling before bed at night, and the first indication she had that there was any truth to them was when the car died not even a half a mile into the wood.

The engine just puttered out and faded like a drained battery out of nowhere and no amount of coaxing would get it to turn over again, even Finn who had some mechanical experience couldn’t get it to so much as grumble again.

“Just great. You couldn’t bring a car with a working battery?” Finn grumbled at Sunny and she glared at him.

“My car is fine. It’s the forest.”

“The forest has nothing to do with you checking your battery,” he grumbled in reply and Sunny growled at him.

Carole ignored the two of them snapping at each other like children and looked around at the dense wood around them.

“Are we safe out here? This place feels strange.” She looked worried and Rachel privately thought she had a right to be.

“Humans aren’t allowed here. They say this land is enchanted to stop intruders and well... the car is dead,” she explained.

“Which means?” Finn had stopped fighting with Sunny and looked equally worried now, his knuckles white where his fingers clenched into fists, the brown of his irises starting to yellow.

“It means we have to walk. That means we’ll be found way before we ever reach the house.”

Rachel didn’t bother explaining how dangerous that was and neither Finn nor Carole seemed to feel the need to ask because neither of them did. Finn wanted to go back but there _was_ no going back. The safest place for them right now was with Kurt in Anderson’s house. So after a brief debate they set out single file down the road with Finn and Carole in the middle, Rachel in the front and Sunny bringing up the rear.

Rachel however was right; they hadn’t been walking ten minutes before somebody found them.

One minute the path ahead of them was clear and the next there way was blocked by eighty pounds of muscle and bared teeth.

Rachel immediately stopped, thrusting her arms out to halt Finn who was following directly behind her. But Finn’s focus was on his mother who had turned to gasp when she heard Sunny let out a curse, for another wolf had appeared directly behind them, this one even larger with sand colored fur.

They weren’t dead yet and Rachel would have bet money that there were at least two more wolves out of sight on either side of them, so the fact that these two had revealed themselves could only mean that they were curious enough to give them the opportunity to live; but she didn’t kid herself that it wasn’t a window of opportunity that could close in a matter of seconds.

Not wasting any of those precious seconds Rachel spun and grabbed ahold of Finn, one hand holding his arm behind his back at an uncomfortable angle and the other grabbing a handful of his hair and pulling his head back to bare his throat.

He was much taller than her- which was really honestly not very helpful at the moment- but Rachel was much stronger than the human women he was undoubtedly used to. Her strength and speed took him off guard and he let out an emasculated yelp and the scent of fear and aggression that gushed from his pores was so heavy her nose twitched.

It did however have the desired effect because the younger wolf, the one with the mix of greys and browns peppering his coat, abruptly ceased growling to sniff and his ears perked straight up. Neither of them attacked and that was good enough for her.

Letting go of Finn who stumbled and cradled the arm she’d held pinned behind his back to his chest, Rachel spread her hands in a universally placating gesture and nodded to the beta and his companion. She knew the one was a beta because this close to the full moon his scent was so ripe with pheromones that it was impossible to miss, and even more tellingly the alpha’s scent was mingling with his in an distinctly intimate way.

 _“Who are you?”_ the older wolf, the alpha, asked and Rachel turned her head just slightly in order to see him and still keep the beta within her line of sight.

“My name is Rachel,” she told them. “And with me are Carole and Finn Hudson. They’re your matcă’s family.”

~*~*~*~

Tira Bedel was overworked, over stressed and her nerves overly frayed as she split her mind and her staff between preparations for the big evening meal and breakfast. Balaur’s envoy was scheduled to arrive promptly after sundown and of course a light lunch for all of those families who were now occupying rooms in the house due to the mass exodus from town would be expected in between.

He wasn’t normally one of her kitchen boys but Steven Evans wasn’t the only omega to find himself pulled from his normal duties to help with the chaos in the house kitchens, but he was by far the strangest. In the hour that he’d been under her charge he hadn’t said a single word. He’d also dropped a tray full of breakfast sausages right on another girl’s foot and dropped a pan of sticky buns within minutes. In all her years as house cook Tira had never met a clumsier boy- Stevie moved like he was made of wood and on strings- but she didn’t have the heart to yell, not after what he’d been through. Poor lamb, not many omegas bounced back after an ordeal like that. The psychological damages alone would certainly mean he’d have a harder time finding a mate.

Nobody would say it to him of course but everybody would know just the same: damaged goods. His pickings after this would be slim and Tira wasn’t so old yet that she didn’t remember the struggle of being young and omega. She felt for the boy. She did.

Still she had a feast to prepare and a staff full of nervous subs whose dominants (if they had them) were preoccupied with preparations for a fight. The kitchen was already a tinderbox and Tira was quickly getting to her last nerve, so when Stevie nearly dropped a mixing bowl full of batter she was frankly relieved when he asked to help in the dining room. She agreed almost before he’d finished asking.

Really it was probably the best solution for everyone, nerves being what they were. Tira glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that an hour had passes since her last look but all she could think about was that it was an hour less until their enemies came.

And with so much to do the last thing she needed was a giant commotion to disrupt her staff and distract them from their duties but that was exactly what happened when there was a clamor at the back door. A red haired omega by the name of Clark was working nearest, and whatever he saw outside the glass sent him running away into the main kitchen like he was being chased by a swarm of bats, nearly running straight into Lupita who was walking with a rack of venison.

The young woman yelped, managing to turn just quick enough to avoid getting knocked over but Clark was less fortunate, tripping over the edge of a table and going sprawling painfully to the floor.

Tira helped put the trembling boy to rights, her gaze fixed on the door where what had so unnerved him was even now making its way inside the kitchen. It was Alpha Crawford with his protégé, and they had four strangers with them, two of whom were human. No wonder Clark had run to put himself out of harm’s way. They were not expecting visitors from another pack, and while the humans did not look like Hunters one could never be sure.

 _“Behind me, mon petit chéri."_ she guided her charges, but most of them did not have to be told already having shrunk away from the door and given the strangers in their midst a wide berth.

Alpha Crawford nodded to her as he and his party passed them but revealed nothing of who their strange visitors were or what business had brought them to the main house, leaving the kitchen almost as swiftly as they had entered it.

~*~*~*~

Blaine was in the safe house with Ian, seeing to the safety of those who were currently forced temporarily to call it home as well as to the continued imprisonment of their prisoners. It hurt to see Jeff caged up but his loyalties were undoubtedly split and Blaine had no time at present to figure out what to do with him and the two remaining MacTere. They’d be dealt with after the conclave and it was important that they remain locked up tight and unable to cause any more grief than they already had.

Jeff’s pale hands were curled around the iron bars as Ian finished the last of the containment spell, his lithe frame shaking with pent up emotion as he bowed his head, heavy with the weight of shame.

“He won’t talk to me,” the younger wolf bit out, the bitterness in his voice nearly outweighed by the ache of sorrow. Blaine hurt for him, for what the boy had lost for the sake of something Blaine understood all too well- but he could not ignore what Jeff’s betrayal meant, nor how it caused his own heart to burn deep in his chest.

“You broke his heart,” Blaine replied and Jeff’s timorous gaze met his, eyes bright and wet with unshed tears and so stark with pain they hurt to look at. He knew by their expression that Jeff understood. It wasn’t just Wes’s heart that the protégé had broken, not only his alpha-master who would suffer to name him the traitor he had made himself.

There was a part of Blaine that wanted the younger man to cry, to beg for forgiveness; to howl and plead his case in whatever messy show of remorse would convince his heart that this boy he had loved and cared for had not so easily cast them all away. But if that was what he truly needed, Jeff did not offer it. Even here, caged and cut off from the bonds of pack and family, he swallowed back the lump of emotions he felt and straightened his spine with an amount of will that Blaine wouldn’t have expected from someone of his years.

“I love him… this is my home,” Jeff said, his voice coming out rough through the tightness of his vocal chords. The young alpha’s knuckles were white where he gripped the bars, the ends of his blond wisps of hair trembling finely; they betrayed his vulnerability but did nothing to deter the quiet admiration the older alpha felt when the younger looked him straight in the eye and said, “I would gladly give my life for what I love.”

Blaine closed his eyes, feeling the bittersweet prick of tears at the back of them and trying to stop his memory from summoning a hundred and one memories of the cub he’d watched grow into the man standing before him, attesting to what went unsaid: Jeff loved them. He would fight for them. Blaine did not doubt that, and yet-

“I know,” Blaine answered, opening his eyes and meeting the younger man’s gaze. He gave him the understanding he craved but could in good conscience give him no more; because the truth remained.

“But now there’s something you love more.”

The words hung between them with finality. Jeff winced as if struck, finally lowering his eyes with a lost expression that made something in Blaine’s chest constrict and he swallowed the lump that was suddenly gathering in his own throat. It was almost a relief when he felt a sharp tug on his consciousness coming from Wes. Ian looked toward the stairs leading back up to the ground floor with a pensive frown.

“Something has happened,” he murmured even as Blaine drew away from the bars. Ian’s grey eyes met Blaine’s worried ones as he added softly, “Call for your mate. We are needed.”

~*~*~*~

Mercedes had been arguing with the ticket agent for at least the last ten minutes, the woman’s dark eyes growing even darker with worry as the agent continued to insist that all flights to France were booked and the soonest seat they had available was for the following morning.

The Dayton airport was not as busy or as crowded as Lina had expected and she could not determine whether that fact made her more or less nervous as she tracked the faces around them, peering into the eyes of each stranger searching for the faintest sign of danger.

Benito, despite her own anxiousness, had quickly grown bored with standing without anything to occupy himself and she’d allowed him to wander just a little ways away from the ticket line to the windows, in order that he might be able to watch the planes passing overhead. It was only a couple of feet away and she’d given him the cloaking charm to wear but the she-wolf found her eyes continually coming back to him, unable to shake the feeling of dread that had been weighing on her all morning.

He was still standing with his palms pressed flat against the thick windows, his figure blurred around the edges by the effects of the charm he wore. The bond he shared with Lina was strong enough to overpower it but he was completely invisible to all of those passing by him. Their eyes skid over him even as their bodies shifted around him and their feet avoided him but Lina kept a close eye, worried that someone might trample over him in their haste to reach the check in.

She glanced back at the ticket agent who was once again typing away at her computer, this time searching for any other open flights to nearby countries.

“There’s a flight leaving for Rome, with a layover in Canada” the woman advised them with a hesitant air, “You could then maybe take a train into France but-”

“I can’t go to Rome” Lina cut her off before she could finish and the woman gaped at her. Lina couldn’t help it, looking at Mercedes with a terrified expression and opening her mouth to beg her to find them any flight but a flight to Rome of all places and Mercedes gripped her by the arm gently and rubbed her thumb over her flesh as she addressed the harried ticket agent again.

“Do you have any other seats on a plane leaving today? Turkey, Istanbul, we’ll take it.”

“Are you ladies in some sort of trouble?” The woman asked with a concerned frown and Mercedes’s expression tightened.

“We’re fine. Can you please just tell me what’s available?”

Lina didn’t hear the woman’s reply. At that moment a strange chill went down her spine and unease trickled across the bond she shared with Benito. Her eyes flew immediately to where he’d been standing by the window and her heart nearly stopped when she saw that he was still where she’d left him, but no longer alone.

A man was crouching beside him, speaking in a hushed voice and pointing at something outside of the window. Even crouched Lina could see that he was tall, his hair a rich dark brown that was nearly black, arms and legs roped tastefully with muscle betraying his strength. She didn’t need to see the drops of what looked suspiciously like blood on his collar to know that he was dangerous, nor to note his ability to see Benito despite the charm he wore. His face wasn’t turned toward her but Lina would have known this man by the sight of his hands alone. She didn’t need a face to know her own mate.

“James.”

Though she barely managed to utter the name under her breath he seemed to hear her. Cooper Anderson turned and looked up at her, his mouth spreading into a half smile as he laid a possessive hand on their son’s head.

~*~*~*~

Following Lina and her companion to the airport was easy. He hadn’t even really had to keep that close behind her to know where she was headed. Of course she was going to try to get out of the country- it was what Cooper would have done in her place. Now catching up with one of his men, procuring transport for her and the boy as well as clothing for himself wasn’t so much difficult as it was time consuming.

Cooper had hardly earned status as a master vampire without having an extensive network of thralls at his beck and call and the great thing about employing thralls was their lack of free will. No questions, no excuses, just ‘yes boss how can I help you boss’. It was damn refreshing every now and then.

A few quick calls, a break in to an unfortunate woman’s house for a quick snack (cheating on his diet, he knew but desperate times and all that) a clothes change later and he and two of his faithful followers were strolling down the hallways of Dayton International to finally collect his errant mate.

When he’d spotted her he’d once again felt what was becoming a familiar lurching sensation in his chest whenever he saw her again, but he kept the wall between them firmly in place. He almost panicked when he could not spot the boy with her- he wasn’t leaving without his son even if he had to raze the entire airport to find him- but it was a simple matter of following the woman’s eyes to figure out that the boy was near and likely wearing the wizard’s charm. Then it was just a matter of opening up their bond just enough until the boys fuzzy image appeared by the window.

Seeing him for the first time on two legs was like a kick in the gut. He was small for his age with rounded cheeks, a riotous mop of black curls topping his head so reminiscent of Blaine at that age that for a moment Cooper wasn’t sure where he was and if he hadn’t somehow looked into some mirror that revealed the past and not the present.

But when he approached the small cub and greeted him the boy looked up and met him with blue eyes and a sweet scent that were all his own.

The boy did not respond with a hello of his own, his fear at being addressed by a stranger leaking loudly into his aura as he immediately glanced back at his mother. Cooper knelt until they were closer in height and would no longer loom over him, drinking in his sight and smell. Plucking the boy’s name from his mind was easy, his defenses nowhere near developed enough at this stage of his growth to protect himself against anyone of Cooper’s experience and ability.

His name was Benito Medici and he was his son, the product of Cooper and Lina’s flesh, and the thought that something so small and amazing as another person could be his was almost enough to make Cooper speechless.

“Do you know where that one is coming in from?” He asked, pointing to a descending aircraft. Benito shook his head warily but was apparently curious enough to halt his slow edging back toward his mother. Cooper smiled at him as he answered, as if sharing something of a secret between them.

“New York. There are close to two-hundred people onboard and I can hear what they’re thinking.”

He didn’t add that it was only with extreme concentration at this distance but it still made Cooper flush with pride when Benito’s eyes widened, the boy momentarily forgetting his fear to gap up at Cooper in amazement at his telepathic range. It was unheard of for lycans and unusually strong even for a vampire but it had been that way for Cooper ever sense his conversion to vryloka.

“You can?” Benito finally gifted him with speech and Cooper nodded with a smug grin.

“Yep. Sure can. You probably could too if you concentrated hard enough. We’re not like regular wolves you and I.”

Cooper’s eyes were drawn away from his son’s face to his mothers, gaze meeting Lina’s terrified one as he laid a hand on top of Benito’s head and gave in to the urge to stroke his soft curls. His eyes didn’t leave hers as he softly murmured, “we’re special.”

TBC in Part 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bad news: Cooper caught up with Lina, Burt and Puck are probably going to be human sacrifices, Jeff's going to have to stand trial, Sam's still stuck in Stevie's form and Kurt's mind is playing tricks on him. Oh and when the sun sets vampires are going to be everywhere.
> 
> The good news: Everyone's still alive until the next update. (Small favors).


	36. Chapter 34: Ovature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the last day before the Conclave. When the sun sets the Vampires will arrive and the battle will begin. But before they can know what terrors night will bring Kurt, and his new family are desperately trying to prepare. Daylight slips by so quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone still with this story. I'm truly amazed by you and I want you to know how dedicated I am to making time in my crazy schedule to keep working on this story. I've written a great deal between now and the last update and am posting this batch together because it was a good splitting point and you guys have waited long enough as it is. Next chapter starts with a bang and just keeps on running, but the good news is it is actually finally THE LAST CHAPTER. Until then lovies.

_Dublin Ohio_

Michael Chang had been harboring a feeling of dread for weeks since that fateful night at the club when Kurt Hummel had attacked Brittany Pierce; a feeling that they were all trapped in a web far bigger than they had any hope of knowing and that sooner or later they were going to meet the spider. Infact, he was pretty sure he already had.

The return of James to the coven had everyone on edge. His father and mother had been cloistered in their rooms all night no doubt strategizing and Mike had kept Tina close to him. He was only happy that she hadn’t put up her usual fuss about his protectiveness. She’d been quiet since dinner, pensive in a way that no doubt reflected the tense atmosphere of the house.

Tina’s uncharacteristic silence was hardly the only oddity sending up flags Mike just couldn’t bring himself to ignore. For one thing there were far too many of them for a peaceful conclave. His parents, their faithful’s, YuRi, Alistar, Gretchen, Aurel and theirs… they were practically a legion. It was ludicrous for Aurel to concern himself with a slight paid to such a minor member of the coven without some hope for greater gain and yet here he was placing pieces in what was undoubtedly a much larger game.

He’d woken that morning to summons from his father, and had slipped quietly from the bed he’d shared with Tina and gone to his parents rooms to find them awake and immaculately dressed for their journey that day.

“James has disappeared,” his father announced upon his arrival and Mike stared at them both in alarm. Past experience had taught him that the older vampire deciding to go rogue never meant anything good for the rest of the coven. “Aurel does not wish for us to know his concern but he’s livid. This was not in his plan.”

“What is his plan?” Mike voiced his concern. “Do any of us know what we are truly doing here?”

Over on the chase by the window his mother made a soft sound of amusement. She was awash in predawn light and seemingly the picture of ease but the slow repetitive movement of her hand stroking the ends of her dark hair was one of her tells. She was not anywhere as unshaken as she appeared.

“Of course not” she murmured, “If there were a plot to attack Blaine and his people, and it were to fail, if ever questioned by the council we could truthfully say we knew nothing of any plot. Balaur is not a fool Michael. The less we know the better.”

He had suspected as much already but something about hearing it said so baldly got under his skin, like a sudden brutal slap to the face.

“So that’s it?” He scoffed, “we just follow along behind Aurel and hope he isn’t planning something that will get us all killed?”

“Don’t be a child Michael,” his father scolded him with an all too familiar coldness. Mike balled his fists but listened obediently as his father finished. “We will wait and see which way the wind blows and when the moment calls we will do what is right.”

“Right for whom?” he demanded to know, a spiteful bit of defiance they both knew carried little weight or consequence. Mike had never before failed to follow his parents will and he wasn’t about to now. His father didn’t even bother giving him a reply but his mother’s really summed up everything.

She crossed the room with no more sound than a whisper of silk and softly laid a hand on his back and murmured in his ear, “For the family, Michael. That is all there is.”

~*~*~*~

_Somewhere outside Bratton, Ohio_

The trees were passing too quickly outside the window of the moving car. They were interspersed with houses and fences, moving by in a constant blur: the idyllic smudged like paint too hastily streaked across canvas. Lina sat with Benito in her lap her fingers aching with the strain of gripping him for fear that he would be taken from her.

Despite the discomfort caused from her grip the cub was eerily quiet. Benito must have been keenly aware of the stench of fear that permuted the car, of his mother’s heart beating so statically in her ribcage, and of the dark hunger roiling inside the strange man that sat beside them whose kin scent had to be very confusing for him.

Cooper Anderson had one possessive arm slung over Lina’s shoulder, effectively caging her, and an equally possessive hand upon Benito’s thigh. His face was expressionless but the slow steady stroke of his thumb over the pants the boy wore betrayed him.

Lina had always been able to tell what he was feeling, even if his thoughts had been a mystery. She and Benito would have little chance of escape. Cooper would hold them as fiercely as she was holding Benito now.

It was strange. Once she had wished for nothing but a scene like this, her and her lover together, Benito between them, perhaps headed to the countryside for a holiday picnic. Those daydreams were as idyllic and as smudged as the scenery outside the window. She had no idea where Cooper was taking them but she very much doubted it was for that.

She glanced sorrowfully up at Mercedes in the driver’s seat, but there wasn’t even a glimpse of the brave woman who had so often come to her rescue. She felt only pain at the sight of her dull expression.

“She’s still in thrall,” Cooper murmured, amused, and Lina flinched at the sound of his voice.

“I’m a master vampire Lina, she’s mine until I let her go.”

“And will you?” Lina asked with far more bravery than she felt; she did not fool herself that Cooper would stop any of what he planned simply because she begged, but there was no reason to harm Mercedes. No gain. She had to try.

“Let her go?” Cooper pondered the question with a tilt of his head. “She’s your friend. I can feel your bonds.” He reached out a hand, as if he could see her affection for Mercedes and could hold it like string or pluck it.

“Wouldn’t you miss her?” There was something very final in his tone and Lina felt the hot prick of tears but she blinked them away.

“Ja-Cooper” she stumbled over the name and winced, had to take a breath before she could begin again. “Cooper please. Killing her gives you nothing.”

“Except food, but I’ve already cheated on my diet once today.” He laughed at a joke only he seemed to get and Lina’s stomach churned. This close it was impossible not to feel the bond pulling between them and the hunger she felt within him filled her with a familiar dread. And even still, it was hard to suppress the desire to lean into him.

She’d forgotten just how this felt; to breathe in time with another being and feel someone else behind her every thought, to feel cold where their skin wasn’t pressed together… to want someone else so completely it felt like a kind of madness.

It had to be madness overtaking her, to want nothing more than to lean into the warmth of his side, the place she fit so well, and smell the scents of wind, earth, and blood he carried like perfume on his skin and know that she had finally found home again.

A warm finger stroked the curve of her cheek with tenderness and she shuddered, succumbing to her flesh and its desire for his touch, a bitter taste flooding her mouth as he drew her in like moth to flame.

She wouldn’t look at him. She would keep her gaze.

“Hey, look at me,” he entreated softly but Lina resisted until he forced her to turn, his hands remaining achingly gentle despite their firm resolve. She could have cried.

“I was kidding. I don’t do that anymore. Well not for food. And sometimes you just need to thrall someone, but the point is… that guy I was, the one who couldn’t control himself and hurt you? I’m not that guy anymore. I love you.”

It had to be madness, the way that hope sprang up in her chest and it suddenly felt so hard to breathe. She wanted so dearly to believe his words. How easy it would be.

She laid a hand over his, where his fingers gripped her skin, and held on as she pled for a dream she’d stopped believing in long ago and still it never died.

“Stop this. If you love me as you say you do let Mercedes go. You, Benito, and I will go away and never darken their doors again.”

They would still be hunted, but they would be together and everything else they loved would be safe. They would never claim either the wealth or the power that they’d been born into but they would have something far greater than that in return.

Cooper’s thumb stroked her skin again and a warm shiver went down her spine as he leaned close to press his lips softly against hers. They barely touched, both of them too aware of Benito squeezed between them watching silently, but however brief the contact Lina felt it all the way through her. Her eyes fell closed and she breathed in deep at the same moment that he did, finding herself surrounded by the scents of her beloved- mate and child- every bit of her flesh humming with a happiness she’d never thought she’d feel again.

Even with her heart pounding heavily in her ears she could still hear its sigh and the children they’d once been whispering sweet nothings in the dark, buried but not forgot.

_“Why do you call me Beautiful? Would you love me less if I weren’t?”_

_“It’s a reminder. For a long time I felt like the only thing left in the world was the kind of wretchedness I felt. You‘re everything I forgot to believe in… and I need you way more than you need me. That’s the truth, and one day you’re going to wake up from this dream. Or I will. That’s my nightmare.”_

“I wish it were that simple, Beautiful” he whispered against her skin, bringing her back to the present, and she knew even before he finished that he was going to break her heart again. “The Family knows about you now and if I don’t deliver on my promises to them they will come after us. But I won’t fail so you have nothing to fear.”

“Except you” she dared, bracing for his response. There was not a bit of her that did not recognize the danger of goading him, angering the beast, but she did not drop his gaze as she told him what she knew to be true if only because saying it aloud might clear the fog of longing still clouding her own mind.

“We will always have to fear you Cooper. You speak as if it were a stranger who held me down and made me fight for my life; but that man was you and you have not changed. You still see this darkness within you as a gift, and want so badly to make others bleed the way you have bled. That is how I know you will do as you did before and destroy the very things you claim to love.”

She waited with a pounding heart but he did not become cruel or snap as she had feared he might, despite the anger she could feel spark in the center of his chest. This time it did not catch flame.

Cooper dropped his hand from her face and returned instead to absently petting their son’s head as he stared off somewhere into the distance.

“I won’t let you go Lina,” he said with finality. “You can have all the time you need to come around, I’ll give you that but I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret. There is nothing that would keep me from you, nowhere you can hide. Do you understand?”

He had not turned to look at her again, but Cooper had never needed help making his point known- not when she knew every inch of him so intimately she could have painted the scenes of death and devastation dwelling darkly in his mind from memory.

She’d always understood the only way out for her was in blood.

_“I need you far more than you know mi amato. You are my redemption. I am not an angel James; I killed the first man who loved me despite my name. He died and I lived and every day I would bid his murderer good morning with a kiss. Do you still think me so beautiful?”_

_“I think light calls to demons far more than darkness. Don’t you agree, Beautiful?”_

~*~*~

_Westerville, Ohio_

Kurt met Blaine and Ian at the door of the main house, his face ashen and his brow creased with worry.

“What is it, what has happened? Where’s Wes?” Blaine asked as they reached him, placing a hand gently at Kurt’s elbow.

“In the infirmary; I was headed there myself. I don’t know why he called,” Kurt answered with an air of distraction. “But Blaine, I can’t find Lina. No one has seen her all morning.”

Blaine was scanning the auras for Lina even as he reached out for Wes, trying to get a sense of what was going on that had the whole house thrumming with chaotic energy, but as the seconds ticked by without him feeling Lina’s distinctive presence within the pack bond, a heavy feeling of dread settled in his stomach.

“She’s not here.”

Blaine wasn’t the only one taken aback by Ian’s quiet admission. Kurt’s eyes narrowed on the wizard, his mouth tightening in a severe line. There was a dark heat surging inside of his mate now, a stinging mix of fury and desperation that Blaine could feel churning in his own stomach.

“What did you do?!” Kurt demanded to know, taking a threatening step towards Ian. He stopped when he felt Blaine grab his arm but every muscle in his body was tense, and Blaine could smell the change on him the wolf was so close.

Ian didn’t look all that perturbed by the danger though. Ian never looked perturbed by anything and it was one of the things Blaine most disliked about him. The whole world could be falling to pieces and Ian would always be standing in the middle of it looking unruffled.

“Can you not guess?” The old man asked on a weary sounding sigh and the dread in Blaine’s stomach turned cold with realization.

Lina had left, because Cooper would follow and to Lina that would mean everything. Beside him Kurt pieced it together just as quickly and a sound, something caught between a desperate laugh and a growl, clawed its way out of his chest wet like it had cut him on its way out. Blaine pulled him close, tucking him against his side as if he could block him from the painful realization as easily as a body blocked wind or sunlight.

Kurt let himself be held, leaning into Blaine for strength for a moment as his body shook and he wrestled with the wolf. Blaine stroked a hand up and down his arm, lending him silent comfort because there wasn’t a thing he could say that would help.

Was he supposed to say Lina would be alright? They both knew it wasn’t true.

“It was her decision,” Ian reminded them. If he had meant the words to be comforting he was way off base.

Kurt straightened up again. His body’s shaking had quieted but something sharp had entered his eyes. He stared intensely at Ian for a moment, his mouth twisting into a smile that more resembled a grimace.

“Of course it was. And you helped her, because that’s what you do isn’t it? Help things along.” He turned to Blaine without giving Ian more of a thought and demanded, “We’ve got to find her.”

“Kurt-” Blaine didn’t want to fight with him but he didn’t think he was going to be able to avoid that when they were both so raw, but one of them had to think rationally and he’d rather it be him anyway. Kurt had been exactly the friend Lina needed despite everything standing in their way because he could empathize with her in a way that Blaine couldn’t afford to.

He wondered sometimes if he even remembered what it was like to do what he felt was right and damn the consequences.

Boyd and the Hunter he’d killed the year before… that had been the last time. He could still remember that sweetly satisfying moment when he’d had Sally’s murderer between his jaws. He’d shown Boyd all the mercy he’d shown Sally; the taste of his prey had mingled with the intoxicating scent of terror brought on by knowledge of the end. It was burned into his mind, easily called upon because the wolf never forgot the hunt. It never _wanted_ to. It was something that Kurt needed to learn, to taste for himself even if he didn’t know it. He would never know any peace otherwise.

“-Ian will have given her something to make it so we can’t track her,” he finished; glancing to the old wizard for confirmation and feeling his heart sink when he received a nod. He knew Ian well enough to guess, but there was a part of him that had hoped.

“But _he_ can. Can’t he?” Kurt demanded to know. Nobody needed to ask which _he_ he was referring to.

“The charm I gave her should shield her from all but the closest of bonds...” Ian trialed off at the loud rumbling growl that rolled in Kurt’s chest and he and Blaine both watched silently as he bit at his lip and struggled to keep the wolf at bay.

 _‘Blaine. It’s urgent!’_ The thought from Wes tugged insistently at the three of them, shattering the tense silence.

Blaine met Kurt’s eyes and found resignation in them, acceptance of the fact that at present nothing could be done for their friend, but there was also resolve. Kurt’s eyes told him this was far from over and Blaine nodded his own acceptance. He truthfully wouldn’t have wanted anything else.

Their shoulders brushed as they turned to walk inside the house together and Blaine couldn’t resist his instinct to comfort, briefly leaning close to rub their heads together in an affectionate nuzzle that Kurt responded to with that quiet rumble in his chest that never failed to make Blaine want to start grinning stupidly. He didn’t but it was always a near thing.

Behind them Ian cleared his throat and said with a soft sincerity that neither of them could disbelieve, “I hope you know. If I could have shielded her from the entire world I would have; but if there is a magic strong enough to keep a wolf from their mate when the bond is true... well I haven’t discovered it yet.”

Blaine shivered. Kurt looked down at him, face creasing in fear and worry. Neither of them said it but they were both taking comfort in the same horrible thought.

Lina had been converted and mated against her will; hurt terribly in many terrible ways by the man who claimed to love her. Their bond couldn’t be a true one could it?

~*~*~

 

*

  
Melwas and the Red Lady 

The history surrounding the rein of Arthur and his descendants is tangled up in myths and it is the intent of my studies to create an accurate reference for future generations of my household. After extensive research (and some underhanded digging) I believe I can now recount the abduction of Guinevere, queen of Camelot by Melwas of the summer country, and her eventual rescue. I became interested in this incident as it relates to stories passed down about a local specter commonly referred to as the woman in red; stories that I believe went on to inspire the Red Riding hood folklore [see my research on the Red Woman].

Briefly I will summarize those findings here. The Red Woman was an apparition greatly feared in Arthur’s day, appearing in many oral and written traditions under various names and physical guises. Most commonly she is recorded as a beautiful young maiden with a mane of vibrant red hair (often likened to a blood red hood) who would lure unsuspecting men and women to their deaths in the deepest darkest woods, presumably where she would shape shift into a giant wolf and devour them.

I became curious about her link to Arthur one night when my own Grandmother was telling my sisters and myself the tale of ‘the girl in the red hood’ as a warning why we young cubs should mind our elders and not sneak about in the woods at night. Ian, deep in his cups, grumbled that we were in fact the things in the forest to be feared and that ‘Melwas’ had seen to that.

Being of curious nature I could not let it rest. Who was Melwas and what did he have to do with either us or the Red Lady? I first heard the name again in reference to Guinevere’s abduction and became further fascinated.

To understand the motive behind Guinevere’s eventual abduction and the conditions surrounding her release it is imperative to first understand the character of Melwas ‘Rhyfedd’. He was known as “Maleagant” in the French tradition and “Melwas” in the Welsh but given the strong Welsh influence in the Anderson blood I will refer to him as such in these accounts. It is recorded in other historical accounts that Melwas was a knight of the round table; however I believe this to be untrue.

Melwas Rhyfedd, or ‘the strange’, was born in a land then commonly called Summer Country [the area is known today as the county of Somerset] to a lesser king. He was the second son, and like many sons in his position he was sworn to Arthur’s service as a knight, though he never was trusted enough to become a member of Arthur’s illusive circle [ergo he shall not be one of the old souls to return at the King’s second coming]. This is likely for several reasons, one being his reputation as a magician and sorcerer [magic and magic users often being feared in those days and connected strongly with paganism] but is most probably due to his friendship with the lady Morgana and the subsequent events that led to his exile.

Morgana was the more powerful of the two, being a direct descendant of the Merlin himself. Melwas had inherited his powerful blood more distantly, but like many practicing warlocks today despite the thinness of his blood he [and he alone of his family] showed uncommon talent. Perhaps all of that could have been forgiven if it were not for his odd penchant for transfiguration- specifically the habit of transfiguring to a female body and luring other men into his bed [who later would swear they had been hoodwinked and spelled by the young sorcerer].

Though nothing could be proved, needless to say he was not popular among the other knights nor was he well received by anyone it seemed but Morgana. She was in somewhat better favor as the court healer; a position earned her [as well as the honorary title of lady] for her close kinship to Lancelot and her heroic deeds saving the then young king’s life.

Indeed for a time it was thought [with some dissent] that Arthur would defy all tradition and take Morgana to wife. Arthur as we know was persuaded to accept the far more suitable hand of Guinevere of Gwent and it is unclear what occurred between the arrival of Arthur’s new bride and Morgana’s exile to make her turn murderous, but she was exposed in a plot by Guinevere herself to poison Arthur [though I suspect the true intended victim was Guinevere and not the king] and sentenced to banishment, only the king’s remaining love for her sparing her the traitors death her actions deserved.

But the enmity between Morgana and Guinevere had only just begun. Morgana with the help of Melwas attempted to kill Guinevere again with a spelled cloak, only to be thwarted when the gentle queen allowed an awed serving girl to try it first.

Melwas escaped before he could be made to pay for his part in the plot, and escaped further capture by assuming the figure of a woman as he traveled. He found refuge in his homeland of Summer Country at Glastonbury Abbey, which as you know [see my research on Avalon] is perched on a gate to Avalon, or as it is called in those parts ‘the isle of glass’.

Melwas claimed sanctuary there for many years, forming a close bond with a young monk who went by Gildas [who would go on to great fame and historical notoriety]. They never consummated the affair, due in part to the maiden’s true origin and his own Christian vows; but when Kay and several knights of Arthur’s circle came to the abbey demanding their cooperation in the fugitives’ arrest it was he who met the party and stood staunchly in her defense, on the grounds that sanctuary was a holy right granted to any who sought it criminal or not.

It is unclear whether or not he had a hand in Morgana’s arrival to secret Melwas away to the isle beyond the marshlands; but it should be noted that the islands of Avalon are only reachable by those of magical blood and the female sex [unless otherwise invited]. It is possible that Melwas was able to find home on the isle at Morgana’s invitation [much as Lancelot had once found sanctuary with Nimue] but it is noteworthy that of all those who have found sanctuary in that great land only Melwas has ever gone on to assume a historical role as one of its queens. Indeed it does not appear in any account historical or otherwise that he ever resumed his male form.

Perhaps for that reason he wasn’t recognized when he returned to Camelot some years later to abduct Arthur’s queen and make off with her to the isle where Arthur could not reach her. Though the king and his men marched and attempted many times to sail to the isle across from the abbey, always they were barred by magic far greater than they.

It was an unnamed woman in Arthur’s entourage who would be the queen’s savior. She is never named but is commonly referred to as the beloved of one of Arthur’s knights [in some accounts she is referred to as Lady Pendragon]. She first noted the feelings of Gildas the monk and plied from him confession of his affair with the wicked sorceress. The lady plotted for Gildas to send a message on a dove, begging Melwas for an audience regarding the fate of Guinevere. The plot succeeded and Gildas was granted entry along with the lady who donned the red cloak of a pagan priestess under the reasoning that the magic guarding Avalon might spare her due to its affinity for females and the nobility of her blood.

She remained silent while Gildas attempted to sway the mad sorceress to reason as was part of their deal; but when Melwas refused the lady showed great cunning and bravery (or rashness depending on whom is telling the story) and took her own action. In some accounts she takes the sorceress by surprise-sometimes with magic, other times with knives- and in a few traditions that I’ve come across she even shifts to the shape of a great red wolf threatening Melwas’ life if she does not take down the barrier between sir Lancelot and the other knights waiting on the opposite shore.

Melwas complied in either case, but sought her revenge. She placed a curse on the lady that varies story to story but essentially goes as follows: they lady shall wander forever lost in the mists of the isle, never to behold that which she loved most again without bringing it death.

And so it seems that even as the mists cleared from the marsh lands and Lancelot and his party finally found their way to the isle it surrounded the lady, who cried out for her beloved amongst Lancelot’s companions. Though they searched until they could search no more, and many claimed to have seen a beautiful young woman slipping through the mists of the marsh, they never found her. In every account they are eventually forced by the strange magic of those lands to abandon the search as their search parties were being stalked by some fierce creature or another.

It became known that the marshes were dangerous, that no man woman or child should stray too close, though they might be tempted to follow the figure of a young woman in red, disappearing into the mists. If they should follow her, it inevitably follows that they are found and consumed by something terrible [typically some nature of wolf].

**Excerpt from the journal of Matthias Anderson.**

**

~*~*~*~

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Calvin?”

The softly spoken question was enough to wake the boy sleeping in the bed. When Calvin woke it was to find himself in the infirmary at the manor house, Allie and his sister Clara sat at his bedside. The moment he began to stir Clara leapt up onto the bed beside him and clung like a barnacle. Calvin didn’t mind it as much as he might have before, even though the bandages around his middle pinched. Now that the night was over it seemed that all his bravery had left him, the terrors he’d seen and faced coming back to him with a rush.

Clara clung to him and him to her, trying to push away the memories of gunfire and the smell of blood in the dark; and Miss Allie leaned over them, placing her palm on his damp brow as she murmured again if he knew the consequences of his actions as she pushed back the limp red strands of his hair. He shivered.

Calvin had only done what he’d felt he had to but he was not so much a child that he didn’t know the consequences would be dire.

“Is Sebastian…?”

Though it had taken quite the effort in courage to voice it, the question tapered off when he saw the disappointment on his Den Mother’s face. In all his years at Dalton, Calvin could not remember Allie looking at him in such a way; it made his insides curl with shame.

“He lives. He’s being held for the Alpha’s judgment… and now so are you.” The words were said softly but held no warmth for all their softness. In his arms Clara whimpered, her fingers stinging where they dug into his sides as she raised her head. She began to plead with tear filled eyes.

“Blaine can’t send him away! He can’t.”

Calvin shrunk back into the sheets, the cold of fear settling into his gut.

The Alpha very well could. He had disobeyed again, placed himself and others in danger to aid their enemy. Of course Blaine would be sending him home.

For a moment he tried to picture the home he’d left so long ago, his mother and father waiting to greet him but the image was fleeting. He barely remembered his mother’s face. Calvin had spent most of his years at Dalton longing to leave the safety of its walls, to know something more of the world than cages; so it was a funny thing indeed, to discover that the idea of losing it forever could hurt so much. It was enough to make him feel like the child no one would let him leave behind.

He held Clara and they cried together until their tears were spent. Too soon Allie took his sister back to the others and he was left alone with nothing to think about but his undoubtedly bleak future.

His father was going to be extremely angry. While Calvin would have liked to believe that his father’s anger would mostly stem from fear for his safety - for Ireland was rife with hunters and wolves of any sort were no longer welcome- the bitter truth was that Calvin’s father was a stranger to him. He would be far more upset about the perceived slight to their family and the disruption of his plans to join his bloodline with the Andersons than he’d ever be about Calvin coming to harm.

He had been told many times that it was wrong to resent his parents for choosing to send him away, but here and now, curled up on his cot in the infirmary Calvin thought bitterly that he would rather have spent the entirety of his life locked up waiting on his parents infrequent visits, than have been sent a world away to live with strangers.

Uncharitable maybe, but he would have liked to have been asked. They had traded home for his safety, and so it seemed he’d been searching for it ever since. It had never truly been here in Westerville and it certainly wasn’t back in Ireland.

The only place Calvin had ever felt truly as if he could belong was on the porch of the little white house in town.

_Calvin peered through the bushes at the rouge alpha sitting on the steps of the porch, his long legs stretched lazily, sucking on the end of the pristinely picked bone of some small creature- likely not a fresh kill if the lack of blood was anything to go by._

_All of the children had been warned not to talk to any of the strays that had come to town but it was hard to view them as dangerous when they hadn’t done anything to hurt anyone._

_The young man sitting on the porch wasn’t that much older than him, a decade or so, and yet every line of his form heralded a worldliness that Calvin could not comprehend. In all that time this man had seen and done enough to fill several lifetimes over. Calvin didn’t have to ask- it was in the scars on his skin, the faraway look in his eyes as he stared off into the distance- but oh, how he always wanted to. He never had before, but that day proved to be unlike the rest._

_“Hasn’t your mother warned you about us kid?” the stranger spoke into the silence, not moving so much as an inch and Calvin froze in shock. Slowly Sebastian Smythe turned his head to glance in the direction of Calvin’s hiding place, a wry smirk on his lips._

_“Yet you’re here, off the beaten path.” The older wolf mused. “Must mean you have some guts. So how about it? You brave enough to meet the big bad wolf?”_

Remembering Sebastian’s first words to him made him ache now. Calvin had been brave. He’d fought for what he wanted like a real wolf and still nothing good had come of it. Blaine would have Sebastian killed and Calvin would be exiled. Clara would be alone here in Westerville and they’d likely never see each other again.

It was at that moment that the curtains separating the twin cots in his room from the others in the hall were swept aside and Doctor Quinn ushered a tall protesting brunette onto the second cot. There were other strangers too following meekly in Quinn’s wake.

“Mr. Hummel please,” she implored the strange man. Wolf, Calvin’s nose informed him but the scent was surprisingly muddled, indeed almost barely there.

“Someone’s gone to get your brother and the Alpha. I’m sure they’ll be here shortly but it’s important I check you over.”Dr. Quinn said.

“I’m fine!” the stranger insisted, apparently not appeased as he attempted to get up again only to be pushed down firmly by two of Quinn’s strong hands and glared at for his troubles.

“You were shot recently. You lost a ton of blood and-” Quinn’s eyes flickered to the strange women who had followed in after them. One of them _human_ Calvin noted with disbelief, and the doctor hesitated for the briefest of moments before she finished. “And while magic goes a long way, it’s still prudent to check you for any ill effects.”

The argument might have gone on if Kurt and the Alpha had not arrived at that very moment, Ian trailing in behind them, officially crowding the makeshift room to over capacity.

But Calvin wasn’t thinking about the strangers or even the fact that his Alpha was only feet from him when he was in so much trouble. It was hard to think of anything besides home with the reunion that was happening in front of him. The man on the bed noticed Kurt first, his eyes going wide as he leapt up and this time wasn’t stopped by Quinn. He was quickly followed by the strange human woman and then the three were wrapped up in a fierce many limbed hug the fervor of which Calvin could only say he’d ever received from his twin.

This could only be Kurt’s family, easy to tell even without smelling the kin notes in their scents.

There was something exposed in the clutch of the tall man’s fingers where they dug into Kurt’s sides. The older woman was crying now and Calvin and the others watched silently as Kurt held her face tenderly and the tight little unit traded fierce whispers.

Quinn nodded to Blaine and wordlessly slipped out of the room. For the moments that it took for them to assimilate to the idea that they were each alive, whole, and finally together again everyone else in the room hung back.

And Calvin couldn’t say what it was about the sight that made him think of Sebastian, sitting alone in his cell at the safe house with the memory of his lost pack mates and thoughts of his own certainly grim future. Thad had always wondered why Sebastian let Calvin hang around the way he had… truthfully Calvin had often wondered the same.

In retrospect he knew that even what little information he could leak about the goings on in the pack couldn’t fully explain it. Perhaps what he had always wanted- what they had both always wanted- was simply this; this kind of family.

~*~*~*

_‘I’d trade anything to have dad here.’_

The thought came as Finn crushed Kurt to his chest for the third time. He didn’t resist, clutching all the harder for the damning and insidious thought that crept into his head at that very moment. No matter how amazing it was to have Finn and Carole there with him- safe and warm in his arms with their comforting scents thick in his nose- there was some tiny selfish part of him that would have traded everything, _everything_ , to have his father standing there.

He shivered, pushing the damning thought away and pulling out of Finn’s grasp to offer him and Carole what had to be a mockery of a smile what with the tears he couldn’t quite blink away and his apparent loss of control over his facial muscles.

“I can’t believe you’re h-here. How did you get h-here?” He managed to get out and Carole barked out a sound that was halfway between sob and laughter, nodding to the two unintroduced she-wolves behind them.

One of them, a short brunette, took it as her cue to step forward and take over. Though she stopped a few deferential feet from them and dipped her head in a graceful bow of submission she reeked of dominant pheromones so heavily it made the gesture almost seem comical. Kurt very much doubted there was a submissive bone in the tiny woman’s body.

“Matcă Anderson. My name is Rachel Berry. On behalf of myself and the wolves of Columbus I’d like to welcome you. I- that is, Sunshine and I-”, Rachel quickly corrected as the other female growled low at her, “rescued your kin, and hope that you take it as a token of our respect and wish for continued good will between our packs.”

Kurt had no idea how to respond to such an obviously formal address. Not what to say or what half of the words the woman had spoken even meant for that matter, and his gaze quickly darted to Blaine in a plea for help. Once again he found himself incredibly thankful for the closeness of their minds because even as Blaine’s face was lifting in a reassuring expression the knowledge that he needed became available to him.

Rachel had addressed him as matcă, his proper title as mate to the Alpha. She’d called him Anderson because he and Blaine were mated now and as the submissive in the relationship it was traditional for Kurt to take his family name. She was being so formal as a sign of respect; respect for who Blaine was. No… Kurt steeled himself. It was for who _they_ were. Rachel had not directed her introduction to Blaine but to him. It was Kurt’s family she’d rescued from danger and him she would win favor with because he was matcă, _queen_ , and that meant something to all of them.

Looking out and seeing all of their expectant gazes, feeling their expectation pulling at him with constant force like gravity, Kurt was only just beginning to realize how much a thing like that actually meant. He looked over at Ian who was watching silently with a knowing expression set so firmly on his face and Kurt couldn’t help but bare his teeth.

What was harder to know was what it meant to him, but as he thought of the dark road ahead and gazed on Finn and Carole’s haggard faces some of that puzzle was coming together.

He had to clear his throat but his voice was strong and steady when he thanked them both.

“But where is my Dad?” he asked. “From my understanding the whole family was supposed to be taken to a safe house.”

Kurt noticed how Rachel’s whole body tense and he could smell the sour sweet stench of fear begin to trickle from her.

“Puck isn’t at the safe house?” She asked fearfully, her eyes darting about as if Puck was going to jump out of hiding any moment now and shout ‘surprise’. At Kurt’s shake of head Rachel went even paler and behind him Carole let out a shrill breath of air, like a tire suddenly loosing air.

“But that can’t be, he was supposed to be on a plane to London days ago!” Rachel insisted heatedly.

“I’m afraid they never made their flight Miss Berry,” Ian informed her with a dark expression and Wes growled.

“Do you have any idea where they might have been taken?” the beta asked.

“A wizard and a pair of thralls were responsible for abducting them,” Rachel responded with a nod to Carole and Finn, her expression tight. “I went after them myself because I knew Puck couldn’t. You instructed him not to have contact with anyone to limit the possibility of being tracked so I didn’t even try. I expected him to be in London and thought the safest place for these two was here.”

That irony was lost on no one. Wes sighed, the beta-major sounding every inch as exhausted as he must have felt as he said, “There’s been nothing on the news and we’ve called the airport officials. There was no disturbance, nothing out of the ordinary that day and without making a trip to Columbus and pressuring it out of them they’ve refused to consult their security footage.”

“Well let’s go then!” Finn demanded sharply from behind Kurt and something about the tone of his voice made Kurt’s hair raise and his teeth tingle; he had to struggle not to bear them and growl at his sibling. The trouble with that was there was desperation and aggression pouring off of him in a pungently earthy scent that the wolf seemed to find almost as grating as the tone.

“It’s not that simple Finn,” he tried explaining but Finn didn’t seem to be in the mood to hear it. He rounded on Kurt with that same misplaced aggression and every hair on Kurt’s body rose like he was a cat about to screech.

“It’s very simple! We’ve got to help Burt! Do you have any idea what we’ve been through-what you put your father through?” Carole tried to grab Finn’s arm, get him to stop, but he shrugged her off and took a heavy step toward Kurt, effectively looming over him with a snarl. “Kurt you disappeared without telling _anyone_ what was up with you and the next thing we know there are vampires killing people and people after us. One of them _shot_ me Kurt, I could have died!”

Kurt’s first feeling was alarm- at the thought of Finn getting shot, the mental image of him laying somewhere bleeding out with no one to help him all because Kurt had enemies now- but as his frantic eyes searched Finn’s body and found no evidence of pain or strain beyond the dried blood on his clothing it was swiftly followed by confusion, and then alarm of a completely different kind.

Finn looked the picture of health and Kurt’s sensitive nose couldn’t smell an open wound on him. He didn’t need to look at Carole and see the terrible truth in her eyes because he’d figured it out now; what it was about Finn’s tone and scent that had the wolf on edge.

A new type of scent was clinging to him, fresh and earthy like new growth, just barely there as if he’d only acquired it briefly passing through a room. It was distinctly lycan.

“You didn’t,” he murmured staring hard at Carole who stared back at him. Her chin was quivering. Kurt could smell her tear ducts at work, hear her heart thumping all the harder.

_“You didn’t give him a choice. He doesn’t know does he?”_

She jumped and her eyes widened a fraction but she didn’t give any other indication that she’d heard the thoughts he’d directed at her beyond the tiniest shake of her head; but Kurt found it easy- too terribly easy- to tap into her mind. Their family bond was strong and whatever shields her human mind had were no match for the wealth of power he could possess when he wanted.

She’d saved her son’s life. She’d do it again. She could guess how he would feel and react to her decision, but she could not possibly know what her choice had stolen from him. How could she know? She knew as little about lycans as he had known, tucked away in his comfortable life blissfully unaware of the privileges of being human. To her, being alive went hand in hand with being human. She had no reference to imagine a world where Finn lived but wasn’t _Finn_ anymore, at least not in the way that he’d been before.

Already he was changed. Finn was scared and off balance and therefore he was aggressive, the wolf in him beginning to stir and not liking its surroundings. Kurt could see himself as he’d been just over two months before this moment; remembered keenly the surges in temper and the fear that came from knowing that _everything_ was wrong and yet finding nothing to support that knowledge beyond his own crazy. He’d been volcanic.

Finn’s situation was that much more volatile, his wolf waking up in the middle of such a crisis.

“What the hell is the matter with you?! They tried to kill us because of _you_. Don’t you care?!”

Finn’s fists were clenched as he shouted, his body vibrating with fury, his eyes wild and hot with panic. He was dangerously on edge and bearing down on Kurt like a- well, like a wolf about to lunge- so it wasn’t any wonder to him that he could hear Blaine and Wes growling warnings or that he could feel the others in the room moving to intervene.

But it was his brother who found himself thrust into a new world- new life, new person- and it was _his_ father in the hands of their enemies and it would be his people who suffered if he wasn’t very cautious and very wise with his choices; and not just them. It was possibly the world, and that was a very dizzying thought because in what universe was saving the world on Kurt Hummel’s shoulders?

And still… it was what it was.

“Back off!” He tried not to snap but he layered every last syllable with the dominance he was still learning how to wield and was gratified at the gasp of shock Finn let out and the involuntary step backwards he took. He seemed to shrink as Kurt glared him down and it was the weirdest sensation but he almost felt himself grow taller the longer that strange force buzzed in his blood and warmed his veins. It was like having the voice of a god, becoming someone who could command stars to fall from the sky or seas to swell. He could see how a person could grow addicted to the feeling, always hungry for a better harder hit.

“You’re my brother Finn, and I love you, so I’m going to forgive the things you just said to me because you’ve been through a lot,” he said slowly and clearly so that there was no misunderstanding between them about what he was and wasn’t going to allow. They were brothers, and Kurt would do everything in his power to help Finn find his place in their new world but he had to learn fast that Kurt had already found his and it meant by proxy that Finn was going to have to do some quick growing of his own.

Gently, but with no less conviction he finished.

“You know if there was any way possible for me to help dad I’d do it, but not if it means walking to my death. He wouldn’t want that even if I did.”

He spared only a tiny glance at Blaine, just to be sure he wasn’t still going to go on the offensive but Blaine wasn’t looking at Finn at all anymore but rather staring intensely at _him_ as if he’d done something miraculous. Kurt waited to see what Finn would do or say in response but the taller male just stood there with a hung head, not quiet able to meet his eye. Kurt recognized the lines of submission in his body and sweeter still he could smell it. He found himself quite satisfied with that.

He stepped forward and laid a hand on the backs of mother and brother and pulled them close, pouring as much of his affection as he could into their bonds as possible, knowing that despite Carole’s being human and Finn only recently converted that mângâiere would reach them regardless. Love was just like that.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he murmured gently as Carole broke into tears again and Finn started shivering beneath his hand. “We’re going to get through this.”

Carole pulled him into a tight hug and clung, whispering hoarsely into his ear “I’m just so scared for him. What do they want, Kurt? Why did they do this?”

He pulled away but kept rubbing her back. It was so relieving to have an intensely close bond with Blaine and by proxy the rest of the pack because his mind was buzzing with thoughts about how worn they both must be and how he wanted to make them both feel safe and comfortable and before he could even articulate it to Blaine, footsteps were hurrying toward them and Wes was moving to make room for Elise as she squeezed inside the already overcrowded room.

Smiling in relief he gestured to their chatelaine even as he continued to comfort his family.

“I’ll explain what I can later. Elise here will find a room for you where you can get cleaned up and get some rest; but mom, Finn, it’s very important that tonight you stay there. The people who had you guys taken- who have dad – they will be here in a few hours and they are dangerous. _Very_ dangerous, so you have to say out of the way.”

They protested, obviously afraid and not wanting to leave his side but Kurt assured them that he was very well protected, that he and Blaine had everything under control and that he would be by as soon as he could to answer their questions and help them form a plan to rescue his father.

He couldn’t tell them that Burt was only one piece to a blood puzzle that Cooper needed to achieve his aims and that is was unlikely he’d be killed so long as he could be used to lure them into a trap; not without making them worry more, and right now the most important thing was getting them settled somewhere safe and as out of harm’s way as they could possibly manage.

It was strange. Just yesterday he’d have given anything to see them again and be having this very moment and now all he could wish was that they had stayed as far away from him as they could. He couldn’t help but feel relieved as he watched them go.

Rachel was adamant that Kurt and Blaine accept her submission, as she did not wish to leave Westerville, insistent that she would see them through their conclave and assist in whatever rescue mission for his father and Puck they put together afterward. She said it was her duty but Kurt privately suspected that whatever respect or fear Rachel might hold for Blaine’s status, she was far more concerned about what had become of Puck.

Sunshine also offered her submission, because after Rachel’s passionate and flowery speech it would have been shameful not to and she had her own pack’s reputation to uphold. Thankfully it was easier to convince the two she-wolves to go and get themselves cleaned up and refreshed before they had to give Wes a full report. With their departure it was finally done, no more posturing, no more orders and politics. Kurt didn’t look at any of the others who remained in the room, content with the stillness.

“That was very well done, Kurt” Ian was the first to speak but he was the last person that Kurt wanted to hear any praise from.

“Yes, very well delegated,” Wes agreed with a brief smile in his direction that looked somewhat pained, and Kurt abruptly realized that he’d pulled rank over him. Despite that, the gesture was genuine and that more than anything finally allowed Kurt to feel something other than numb. He treasured the pleasant feeling of pride, knowing that pleasure was going to be a fleeting feeling in the hours to come.

 _“You were a pleasure to watch,”_ the thought slunk into his head, quiet as a whisper and equally intimate and Kurt’s eyes flew to Blaine who couldn’t quite contain his blush even as his eyes continued to regard him with an intensity better reserved for food and the starving. One didn’t have to be bonded to the man to know that he wasn’t exactly thinking with the brain upstairs any longer. Arousal was a particularly strong smell. Kurt recalled that Blaine had reacted similarly when he’d gotten pushy down in the cell with Sebastian too.

Honestly, wolves were turned on by the weirdest things.

Kurt rolled his eyes, like he _wasn’t_ warmed to his toes by having this sort of effect on his mate and reminded Blaine that they could all be vampire food in a few hours.

Blaine sobered pretty quickly after that and they were both aware of the fact that there was a small part of Kurt that would always regret that.

 _“Not small enough”_ Blaine grumbled between them and he was satisfied when Kurt’s steely continence broke with a barely contained giggle and a grin. They shared another brief nuzzle and behind them Ian and Wes shared exasperated expressions and Wes mouthed something that might have been ‘we’re all doomed’.

~*~*~*

_“Andrivette! Where are you, you little demon. There will be trouble when I find you!”_

_The four children behind her giggled as lady Dreda tore apart the nursery looking for her oldest and wiliest charge. Remembering the others the woman cringed at her hastily spoken words. She feared that if not they then certainly her missing charge would be wounded by them._

_The were-kin had not always been thought demonic. They were pagan, as such things went, but pagan did not have to mean (and rarely did) derived from evil. Dreda had made sure to impress this important point on every tender cub in her care for as long as she had been head of the nursery at Castle Bamburgh. It was home to the kings of Northumbria who were the blood of Pendragon (whom everyone knew to be as pagan as they came)._

_The house of Pendragon was a noble house. Of that no one, not even the most vicious tongued guttersnipe lying in the lowest of dungeons dared deny. They had earned their right to nobility the way of all true nobles: not in coin but in the blood of enemies vanquished. They were renowned warriors, fiercely loyal only to their own and said to be descendant of a tribe of Thracians whose ancestor Thrax was believed to be the father of wolves._

_They kept their truth to themselves sharing the proud heritage of their clan only with other were-kin. Andrivette Pendragon was in a troubling situation, for she had at the same time the most and the least to be proud of._

_That trouble had begun with her mother; curse the woman’s black soul._

_The cub’s sire King Cador was a good man and a strong alpha. Cousin to Uther he’d been one of the first to swear his fealty to Arthur when he’d pulled the wizard’s sword from the stone and therefore one of the first to receive recompense for his assistance in helping the young king reclaim Pendragon land._

_Their enemy King Marke of Kernow had pleaded peace with Arthur and as a part of the peace treaty -along with vows of fealty and offerings of family treasures- Marke had offered up his niece Elaine in marriage to Cador._

_The lady Elaine’s father Gorlois had been slain by Uther and her mother Igraine abducted only to later meet her own death; but not before she’d birthed a son with Uther. Though Elaine and Arthur had shared a mother Arthur had found no love in the heart of his half-sister._

_Elaine had only been a babe at the time of her parent’s deaths, barely having seen the end of five summers, but she had never forgotten the trauma of her childhood or her hatred for the house of Pendragon._

_For that reason Arthur hesitated to agree to the union but with Elaine came the titles and holdings of her father the Duke of Kernow which her sons would one day inherit and pass on to the sons of Pendragon. More importantly to the king, his house would be united with Marke’s peacefully and a chance for peace was something that the young king could not forgo._

_Elaine and Cador had married and Elaine had made the poor man miserable until the day she’d died of fever, living just long enough to leave her scar on Cador’s house. There was no one who could forget that while yet living she’d rejected the gift of wolf spirit and worst of all she had rejected the babe Andrivette._

_It was good riddance in Dreda’s opinion. The poor cub had enough to overcome what with being a mule, there was no need to have her mother around poisoning her with her bitterness._

_And there, Dreda spotted it, sticking out beneath a stack of old play things- the crown of a head of vibrant red hair. Red as dragon scales their Alpha always said with such pride._

_Dreda grabbed the chest of toys and tipped it over, spilling the young woman out onto the cold stone floor. Andrivette sprawled with a startled yelp and the other children roared with giddy laughter. The princess of Northumbria stuck her tongue out at them, only to yelp again when she was hauled unceremoniously to her feet by her den mother._

_“Owe, Dreda you yank my hair!”_

_“Lucky for you that is all I yank,” Dreda growled in reply shaking her young charge. “Do you know what embarrassment you’ve caused your father this eve?”_

_Though she was ten and three and very much old enough to understand the meaning behind Dreda’s words Andrivette said nothing. She merely clenched her jaw, tilted up her stubborn nose and looked past Dreda as if the older woman’s questions were beneath her._

_“You will march yourself back to your father’s hall and apologize to his guest” Dreda ordered sternly and unsurprisingly mention of Cador’s visitor was enough to shake the girl’s mulish resolve to stay silent._

_Andrivette had been called to her father’s hall earlier that evening but had not heeded the summons, sending word through a poor trembling serving girl that she refused to place herself in such dishonoring company as Lord Isley, her father’s guest._

_“The man who thinks to buy me? I think not!” the girl shouted in reply._

_Dreda found her own anger cooling in the face of the young girl’s pain, throbbing so keenly over their bonds of love._

_“Vetty, love… All women marry. It is the way of the world,” she tried to explain._

_“Not our world” Andrivette insisted lowly, with such an ache in her voice that Dreda’s heart clenched. Glancing back to meet the curious eyes of the other four Dreda sighed. It would not do for them to see the lady of the house in such a moment. Andrivette might be the Alpha’s daughter, and niece to the High King, but she was still a half breed, a fault not easily forgotten nor her mother’s slight to their kind easily forgiven._

_Quietly Dreda bade them go prepare for the evening meal and watched silently as they nodded and slipped reluctantly from the room, trading whispers between them. Once they were alone she laid her hand on Andrivette’s pale cheek, smoothing away the lines of stress that had formed there._

_“Dear one, why do you protest so strongly finding a mate?” She murmured the question gently but Andrivette flinched as if she had shouted._

_“It is not a mate that father finds for me but a husband.” The distinction and what Andrivette felt of it was clear. “He offers me to foolish old men who know nothing of anything because he thinks none of our kind will want me. He’s ashamed of me.”_

_“That is not true,” Dreda insisted, her fingers tightening their grip on the girls arm. “You are his child, and as loved as any in this house.”_

_More, Dreda thought earnestly but she did not confess this for fear that the words would find their way to the ears of the other children she cared for. It was an uncharitable thing to think._

_“I know,” Andrivette admitted in a small voice. She grasped Dreda’s arm gently and squeezed, mustering a small smile. When she spoke again it was with a decisiveness Dreda recognized all too well from their Alpha._

_“But my father sees my lady mother whenever he looks at me. He fears that I will never be able to call forth the wolf. Though I cannot blame him for such fears they are unfounded.”_

_Dreda frowned, the implications of the child’s words filling her with worry. Though she smelled as much of the wolf as any of them, in all her years Andrivette had never achieved a proper shift. Dreda had often caught her attempting it in her younger years but she’d warned the girl against it, fearing as Cador did that her blood wasn’t strong enough and that she’d only injure herself with her attempts._

_“And how is that?” Dreda questioned. “I know that sly look of yours Vetty, what have you done?”_

_“I will not be marrying Lord Isley, or any other braying stud father trounces past me,” the girl declared rather than answer._

_“Aye, fine. But to what good Girl, answer me that?!” Dreda demanded in exasperation._

_“Father will be forced to take me on the all-hunt this year now that I am of age. Then everyone will know the truth of it.”_

_“The truth of what Vetty?” Dreda sighed, already sensing that the battle for now had been lost._

_“That I am the blood of Pendragon. I will belong to no one but who I choose.”_

_Andrivette smiled, teeth sharp and glinting in the light of the torches. And there, with the unprecedented glowing amber of the wolf’s gaze shining in her eyes, Dreda could only think that Andrivette looked like a young woman preparing for war._

__~*~*~*~_ _

___Westerville, Ohio. Sunset._ _ _

Kurt and Blaine spent the rest of the daylight hours overseeing the final preparations for Balaur’s envoy and only when time had afforded it had he been able to make good on his promise to see how Finn and Carole were settling in their appointed room. Not well.

They wanted answers to everything faster than they could form the questions; questions that Kurt himself was asking the universe at large without gleaning much in return. He could only assure them that for the time being they were safe and that they would not be held there against their will any longer than it took to handle the coming threat against them.

Needless to say it was in no way an easy conversation. It was over far too quickly. Too soon Blaine called for him saying their guests were close and it was time for them to get dressed. As he walked back to the room he supposed they now shared Kurt’s mind was stuck between two things: how unfairly brusque it felt longing for and anticipating when he’d see his family again only to trade these hurried conversations laden with the helplessness of their situation and have to rush on to the next thing; and then absurdly- but no less profoundly weighing on his mind for all its absurdity- came the sudden realization that in all of the stress of the daylight hours he’d not once thought on what he might wear that night.

Kurt came to a halt outside of Blaine’s room his hands curling above the brass knob in an aborted movement and he shuddered swallowing down a surge of panic.

 _Get a grip Hummel_ … His frantic thoughts hissed and right on the back of one thought came another … _it’s Anderson now. Matcă Anderson_.

Who was that? That was him wasn’t it? Also, that barking laughter bordering on the hysterical was probably him too which couldn’t be good because – important night ahead, got to keep it together and all that- but personally he felt he deserved a pass; because in a matter of hours he’d gone from Kurt Hummel to matcă Anderson and he had no idea who the hell that was supposed to be, or how he was supposed to dress to meet Vampire dignitaries, or who this wreck of a man was standing in Kurt Hummel’s place who hadn’t heard important political dinner and immediately started designing six potential outfits.

_Matcă_

Holy shit who had agreed to that?

You did. Rather enthusiastically he recalled and another round of giddy laughter burst from his lips. That would teach him to make important decisions while being fucked six ways to Sunday. Except no… Kurt sobered, his chest heaving less from laughter now and more from his deliberate and forceful efforts to steady his breathing… no that wasn’t fair was it? He hadn’t mated with Blaine just because of the heat. He’d decided before then, consciously with as full an understanding of what it would mean as Blaine could possibly give him.

Blaine had given him far more room to consider than was wise or even safe, nearly losing him to a hormone crazed brute of an alpha who hadn’t cared two shits whether Kurt was prepared to be his mate or not. He’d asked for this and it was unfair to everyone not to be able to handle it and god how pathetic would it be if this was the thing that broke him. Clothes!

“Kurt?” the gentle summons pulled him from his own dark thoughts and his hand curled around the doorknob, his senses already honing on Blaine’s presence inside the room and everything else longing for him with familiar certainty. He knew that comfort, safety, and warmth was just ahead and it gave him the strength he needed to twist the knob and keep moving forward.

Blaine wasn’t alone in the room he discovered. Waiting with him were a pair of house omegas, a male and a female, whose faces struck him as familiar but whose names Kurt could not recall despite his efforts. Blaine was standing next to the bed where the female had spread out stacks of fabric. Her male companion had what looked to be a number of belts looped over one arm which he held extended for Blaine to consider.

Kurt’s mate pulled his attention from the two omegas upon his entry, Blaine’s soft gaze finding his as the beta closed the door quietly behind himself, Blaine’s face set with an expression that left no doubt his awareness of Kurt’s brief but all too humiliating bout of hysteria.

He found himself glad that Blaine did not rush to him or attempt more than the softest of brushes over their bond; Kurt crossed the room on the power of his own feet and glanced questioningly at the omegas and the bolts of fabric on the bed.

“I figured, with everything being thrown at you the dress code for tonight would be the last thing on your mind,” Blaine explained with a small smile gentling his expression “So I had Elise bring up some of my family’s things.”

He gestured to the bed, and Kurt’s eyes widened with awe as he took in stack after stack of folded fabrics in what would have been any designers dream. There were soft linens and silks in almost every color of the rainbow, some beautiful all on their own, others emblazoned with intricate and immaculate stitching to create bold patterns. Blaine gestured again and the girl reached for a particular bolt of fabric, offering it shyly to Kurt with a smile; but it was Blaine’s fidgeting that held his interest, the sudden flush of pink in his mate’s cheeks emphasizing the pinpricks of anxiety they shared through the bond.

“That one was my mother’s…” Blaine cleared his throat and dropped his gaze for half a second before continuing on. “I know how you like blue so I thought you might like to try it.”

Might like? It was an impossibly smooth bolt of tartan silk, with vibrant cerulean and green squares and bars of black and red. It would have taken a stronger man than Kurt not to gasp a little in pleasure just at the sight of it. It wasn’t just the beauty of it that had a lump growing in Kurt’s throat however. The color was perfect, something he might have picked out for himself while perusing his favorite craft store back in Columbus.

Indeed there was a scrap book stored away back at his old house full of plans for a wedding that would never be and a pair of suits he’d never make. He remembered many afternoons siting with Rex, pictures and scraps spread out like the dusting of snow around them, still adding to that book as if the dreams it had been founded on hadn’t already burnt to ash long before that. That was just who Kurt Hummel was: ever hopeful that things would get better and that one day he’d have the moon.

He reached for the bundle with incredible gentleness, not missing the fact that Blaine had said the expensive fabric had once belonged to his mother and wanting in no way to damage it with his oily fingers.

“It’s perfect Blaine,” he said, and there was far more that he couldn’t find words to say but the look in Blaine’s eyes told him he didn’t need them. “But what can I do with it?” he asked, “I mean I’m good but even I can’t put together a suit in under an hour.”

Blaine’s shoulders fell as he laughed in a mixture of amusement and relief.

“I think you’ll find our formal wear much simpler than you’re used to.”

Lycan’s had to be ready to shift at a moment’s notice and couldn’t sacrifice mobility for fashion. Blaine explained that it changed from region to region but that the Andersons, likely because of the celtic influence in their heritage, still held to the tradition of wearing kilts. And when Blaine said traditional he wasn’t kidding. By the time the omegas (whose names turned out to be Chelsey and Edez) had finished pleating and belting the fabric Kurt had made his peace with the fact that he was going to be trouncing around in little more than a belt and a blanket.

He was helped some by the fact that he’d always thought kilts to be pretty fabulous, he was pretty sure the belt he picked to accent the ensemble was made of solid gold chain, and the fact that Blaine was being similarly outfitted didn’t hurt either. Blaine was all broad shoulders and bare skin, not to mention underneath the hem of that kilt Kurt was all too aware of the fact that he was wearing absolutely nothing.

One had to stop and appreciate the finer things in life after all and Blaine was definitely one of its finer things.

“You’re terrible, Kurt” Blaine tossed a droll look over his shoulder in response to Kurt’s thoughts and they grinned at each other. Blaine dropped his arms as the boy Edez finished tightening the belt around his waist and turned to regard Kurt with an expression too intense to be called fond, closer to adoration.

“You’re stunning.” He stated, like it was unadorned truth and Kurt felt his cheeks heat. He stepped closer to him because close was where he belonged and this time when Blaine nuzzled his cheek he let his eyes drift closed and savored the sweetness of his flesh meeting Blaine’s. When his eyes drifted open they met the sea of browns and greens in Blaine’s eyes and he shivered.

It was off putting, how singularly perfect it could feel to be with Blaine like this. It was like holding all the beauty of the world in the palm of his hand and watching it burn.

“You’re trembling…” Blaine murmured the words, his fingertips touching the corner of Kurt’s lips as he observed their truth and Kurt bit into his bottom lip but did nothing to hide how suddenly bare he found himself. None of the lies he’d been holding himself together with would have fooled Blaine anyway.

Kurt had all but forgotten that they weren’t alone in the room but a flick of Blaine’s eyes was all Chelsey and Edez needed, dipping their heads respectfully as they dismissed themselves. Now, alone in the room Blaine gently grasped Kurt’s hand in his and tugged him all the closer. As brow touched brow he bent his neck in offering; it was willing supplication, the kind of which Kurt knew he could offer no one else and the truth of his willingness was there for the world to see.

The mating bite he’d given Blaine had scarred but it was anything but ugly. Perhaps the patch of thin white lines would have been to an outsider but to Kurt the sight of them brought his racing heart leaping somewhere into his throat as the memory of heat and teeth against skin came over him. He zeroed in on the mark, chasing a scent or maybe just the memory of it, flicking his tongue out to tease the raised skin of scars in a tender if wet stripe.

Blaine shuddered but stood still, breath coming harder as he watched Kurt from beneath the fan of his eyelashes.

“This means I’m yours, until the end of everything.”

Kurt nodded. His fears had not left him but they no longer had the same hold on him as they’d had before. His arms were full of Blaine, his heart even fuller, and his senses saturated in the taste and smell of home. What he thought next, he knew with absolute certainty.

“Until the end of everything… and even after that.”

Blaine met his lips with a moan, quickly muffled by the press of their mouths, and the kiss shifted swiftly from devastating to desperate. They were too aware of the impending danger, too aware of the fact that the skin under their hands while soft and unblemished now could easily be torn and bloodied; so they gripped and they grappled for each other with the desperation of men who feared they might fall from some great height.

Kurt was gasping as Blaine bit at his collar bone, the hard press of his knee against Kurt’s groin edging him backwards even as Kurt’s hands were fighting with the belt at Blaine’s waist. Blaine batted his hands away with a grunt pushing Kurt backward and down onto the bed.

“No time.” His eyes were glowing the hot amber of the wolf as he pulled Kurt’s legs open-a look that Kurt was really coming to cherish- and he had no doubt that his own eyes had gone electric blue because there wasn’t a single part of him that wanted to resist the pull of Blaine’s hands. The fact that his mate wasn’t pressed inside and against him six seconds ago was nearly intolerable.

He all but shook with anticipation as he placed his legs on Blaine’s shoulders, nails slipping and catching on bare skin as they extended with his excitement. Blaine crushed a sound that might have been a hiss of pain with the crash of their lips, but he gave Kurt no time to think on it. He pushed inside where he was slick and ready in one quick thrust, driving the air from Kurt’s lungs and pushing a hiss of his own past his lips.

“Fuck,” he cursed as Blaine pulled back and thrust again. That was perfect. This was perfect, the way that Blaine had just thrown him down, the scratch of their kilts against his skin, the strain he felt in his core as he balanced juxtaposed against the wonderful fullness deep inside as Blaine thrust inside him.

“More than perfect…God Kurt,” Blaine growled, driving into him again. “You know you’re going to smell like I fucked you? They are all going to know that you’re mine.”

“Harder,” he pleaded, clutching Blaine all the more in insistent demand. “Fuck, harder please…”

It built like a storm, rolling in swiftly and crashing over him in a sudden downpour. He gasped Blaine’s name and squeezed as he came and it was enough to push Blaine over the edge, until he was coming with a curse.

Blaine eventually caught enough breath to slowly withdraw and Kurt lowered his legs with a small wince as he felt muscles pull and twinge. Too rough too fast; but he couldn’t bring himself to lament any of it. He grasped Blaine by the neck, pulling him down into a sweaty and exhausted kiss, closing his eyes to savor the taste of him as he let his mind float in the hazy warmth of afterglow.

If he could only just have this forever… the rest of the world could fall to ruin. He really wouldn’t care.

And then, because perhaps it just had to be, they heard the first howl of the guard.

Their guests had arrived.

__~*~*~*_ _

___Hours before the battle that would take his life, Gwyn of Gwent stood at the edge of the forest staring out at a great field._ _ _

___It was a gray morning for battle; but in all the years that they had spent at war with one enemy or another Gwyn had started very few battles on beautiful sunny days. No, it seemed that war was an enterprise for the rain and the mud, a business foul enough that even the sky had to weep._ _ _

___From where he stood at the edge of their camp, just a few yards from the tree line that shielded him from the open field they would have to cross to meet Arthur and his men, he could see the dim flicker of fires in the enemy camp._ _ _

___It was a bitter thing, what they had come to. Enemies? Across the way crouched over their fires, many of them eating their last meals, were men that he had fought with, who had fought _for_ him time and time again; and now they were enemies?_ _ _

___He thought on each of them briefly: handsome Tristan whose easy laugh had been missing too long since Isolde had returned to her husband would be playing his lute, the music the only balm that ever seemed to comfort him these days. Serious Gawain would be traipsing through camp harassing every soldier who stooped on their watch or failed to tighten a buckle- mothering them all the way he had always done._ _ _

___Percival would be siting by the fire, spending what might be his last hours tucked into the pages of one of his books. He’d always said he didn’t want his last thoughts to be ones of fear and trepidation but rather of higher places and better men. Sharp tongued Kay would perhaps be mocking him in order not to dwell on his own fears, but more likely since the loss of his wife he would be sat silently in the shape of a wolf, the cares and pains of mortal men lost to the mind of the beast until it was time to fight again._ _ _

___Bedwyr… his sweet Bran… he’d be apart from the others, somewhere where he could cast his spells and beseech the old gods for the souls of the dead. His brother Galahad would have sought solace as well to offer his own prayers and supplications to the god that he served. His boys were far more alike than they would ever admit, opposite sides to the same coin._ _ _

___What must they feel, knowing their fathers were at war with one another Gwyn wondered?_ _ _

___Arthur, a King desperately trying to hold onto the tatters of his kingdom, at war with Lancelot, the man who had given up a throne to serve him but who could not surpass his own flesh. Both too stubborn for anyone’s good, both of them now cloistered in their tents to wrestle privately with their own uncertainties, praying that their choices would not mean the death of what they loved._ _ _

___There was salt in the air, as if the very wind were laughing at them all for their foolish hopes and prayers._ _ _

___Gwyn was armored, prepared to fight for his life against his own flesh and blood. How could this end any other way?_ _ _

___This gray morning, heavy with the promise of mud ground into open wounds and stinging rain pushing blood into eyes, was just the accent on a truth he’d accepted even as he’d stood trial in Arthur’s court, watching his own son condemn him._ _ _

___They had all lost. They’d lost each other so completely the wound called for a cleansing rain._ _ _

___He didn’t turn at the approach of footsteps; instead he waited for Lancelot to stand beside him and together they stared out at the distant fires of Arthur’s camp._ _ _

___“I wouldn’t think less of you if you changed your mind.” When his lover finally spoke he did not lift his gaze from their enemies._ _ _

___“And leave you to fight on your own? You jest,” Gwyn replied with a scoff._ _ _

___“Gwyn, your children are out there.”_ _ _

___“They are yours as much as mine. Still you will fight and so will I.”_ _ _

___“But I did not carry them.”_ _ _

___And this more than anything, made Gwyn turn to him finally with fury in his gaze._ _ _

___“Aye, I am their máthair. I carried them in my body and gave them life. Today I may meet them on a field of battle and take it!” Gwyn snapped. “I have considered these things Lancelot, until it has made me sick and my spirit craven. I do not know what I will do if it should come to my life for theirs today, but I will tell you this. I will not run. I will not hide away like a spanked child while Arthur beats at our doors demanding our lives for a betrayal that was no betrayal at all.”_ _ _

___Carried by his agitation Gwyn cursed, turning from the edge of the wood he stomped back toward their camp. As he marched he continued to rant, casting Lancelot baleful glances over his shoulder as he went._ _ _

___“As if we should never have known any love but what our___ king _ _ _allowed. Would it have been better, had I just sat and allowed myself to whither while___ he _ _ _flitted off to___ his _ _ _lover whenever the desire struck him? Does _my_ heart not matter? Does ___ my _ _ _soul have no needs besides those my___ king _ _ _grants to me?!”_ _ _

___“No, I daresay not” Lancelot chuckled lowly as Gwyn nearly trampled the page boy who was tending to his horse and wasn’t wise enough to get out of his way. “But choosing to sit this battle out would not mean you were ashamed of us.”_ _ _

___He waited as Gwyn mounted. It was clear by his expression and posture that he was already resigned to the inevitable. Lancelot was clever like that._ _ _

___“It is how the men would take it. I chose you Lancelot,” Gwyn reminded him with a superior look down his nose. “And I will choose you again whenever the choice is given. We fight together.”_ _ _

___“Until the end of all there is?” Lancelot asked with an apologetic squeeze of his boot clad calf and the tightness in Gwyn’s chest finally eased. Leaning down he gripped his lovers hand and murmured against the press of his lips._ _ _

___“Far beyond that.”_ _ _


	37. Crecendeo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The vampires arrive and the matches hit the gun powder trail. In other words a crescendo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter for you. Once again I'd like to thank all of you who have stuck with this story and those who left their thoughts on the last chapter. I did receive them and will answer them in a few moments. It was a very productive summer for me in the work department which unfortunately meant not a lot of writing time. However I am home now and I will try not to let it be seven years before I get the final battle and the epilogue out. ;) I hope you enjoy.

**Word Guide**

Bruja: a Spanish word for witch.

Cohoba: A powder created by crushing the seeds of the Cohoba tree. Taino Shamans would inhale this as part of their religious/spiritual practices. It’s a powerful hallucinogen.

 ~*~

_Serpent Mounds, Bratton Ohio_

Kurt woke suddenly, awareness rushing back like a sudden slap leaving him dizzy and uncertain as he tried to put together where he was and whether or not he was in any danger.  He first noticed with increasing alarm that he was lying on hard ground, a small stone cutting into his cheek and the smell of grass clogging his nose, and that the honey comb like structure his swimming eyes were desperately trying to make sense of was in fact a cage.

The second thing that registered to him was the sense that wherever he was, he wasn’t alone. Beyond the smell of grass and earth he could smell at least four others and three of them were definitely lycan.

The familiar musk almost overpowered the fourth scent, the richer notes of earth and magic distracting from the far more subversive notes of salt and skin that accompanied humans. Notes of bar soap and motor oil mingled with fear and distress but they could not distract from the altogether too pleasing under note of <i>kin</i> that Kurt detected with a shocked sniff. He knew that smell.

“Dad!”

~*~*~*~

_Several hours earlier, Westerville Ohio_

It was eerily quiet in the forest as for the first time in the pack’s existence the vampir approached the home of the Alpha’s. The typical sounds of pack life were all silenced, and even the usual sounds of forest life seemed subdued as if the world were holding its breath. Ian as well as the entirety of the Westerville inner guard- minus Wes and his party- had gathered on the front steps of Anderson Manor to receive Balaur’s envoy and wait in tense silence.

Santana stood not far from Blaine’s left. The she-wolf’s face was set in the gravest expression Blaine had ever witnessed, ignoring the glaringly wide berth the others were giving her. Blaine had not figured out what her exact relationship was to Brittany, but it wasn’t hard to miss how protective Santana was towards her. Their bond was strong, an unprecedented thing for their kind and it was making even Blaine uneasy. Santana hadn’t said a single word since they’d left the hall- besides to smirk pointedly at him and direct an exaggerated sniff in Kurt’s direction as they’d filed out to the front steps- but by the nearly electric hum of tension Blaine could feel over the pack bond he was fairly certain that many of them were sharing whispered thoughts privately.

 Many of them no doubt were still debating Wes’s decision to take Jeff along with John, Noelle, their protégés and Rachel Berry. The she-wolf had requested it hoping that she might be able to smell some trace or hint of her pack mate that could prove useful in ending this charade before all the sooner, and Blaine and Wes had both agreed that ending the conclave on their own terms before their enemies plans could come to fruition was best.

Including Jeff in that mix however had caused some contention among the others, and Blaine wasn’t without his own worry. Jeff had after all shown that his loyalty did not truly belong to the pack. Not anymore; and the man he was now loyal to had actively been working with Cooper long before they’d had any idea of the danger they were in.

_'Can we trust him?’ Blaine had asked, thankful for the privacy of their minds- unwilling to undermine his Beta’s judgment in front of the others. No one could miss the obvious strain this ordeal with Emma was placing on him- he was wan, his features haggard, and Blaine was sure he hadn’t eaten more than a few forced bites of food all day- and they all knew that the longer the submissive stayed under the less likely it was that she would ever wake. It was crucial that Wes stay with her but with a greater threat at hand he was forced to split his focus between his duty to his pack and caring for his intended mate._

_‘I need to,’ Wes had answered, the thoughts pressing against their bond with raw ache.  ‘Jeff has been my partner for over four years day in and day out. He’ll know when and how to help me… should I need it.’_

_When Wes had finally looked at him Blaine had seen what it was costing him to admit that he questioned his own ability to lead._

Blaine had relented, because if he trusted anything he trusted that Jeff, whatever else, loved his alpha-master far too much to let him come to harm.

They’d been gone for what had felt like an age but was in truth only ten minutes- every step the vampires took within his territory flaring in Blaine’s consciousness like signal flares- when the howl of warning came. Blaine had already straightened his back and turned his gaze toward the break in the trees where he knew Balaur’s envoy would appear. At the sound the others turned their heads. He could hear the sound of their approach now- heavy steps and whispering silk catching on bush and bramble- over the sound of the quickening heartbeats of the guard.

Kurt’s was loudest, thudding painfully hard as his mate swallowed thickly, eyes glued to the forest for the first sign of their visitors.  They came a moment later, led by the lupine forms of Wes and Jeff and followed behind by Noelle and the others.  He felt a flare of pride at the sight they made. The looked imposing and strong with their gleaming coats rippling with each graceful step, unconcerned with any threat and confident in the wolf’s ability to protect its own.

A thrilling trickle was winding through him as he caught Adam’s eye and the blonds lips quirked into a grin.

 “Are you guys always this excited about your potential death?” Kurt muttered under his breath beside him and Blaine could no longer hold back his smile, even as Kurt shook his head at him.

“Like you said,” Blaine reminded him, offering his arm which Kurt readily took. “Wolves are weird.”

 

~*~*~*~

 

‘ _Breathe_ ' Kurt reminded himself as the vampires made their way to where he and Blaine waited on the steps. There were so many of them, far more than should be necessary for a _peaceful_  delegation. It was almost laughable how little they were trying to pretend that they didn’t intend to incite violence.

Kurt was surprised to see how many humans they had with them. Thralls, as Blaine had explained it. Slaves, Kurt was more inclined to think. He searched the progression of bodies for a sign of Tina, finally spotting her near the front. Though he tried to catch her eye she did not so much as glance his way, her eyes glued to her feet as they trudged meekly along the path. She looked impossibly small and vulnerable wedged as she was between Mike- who he recognized from that one disastrous meeting the month before- and a vampire male who was either his father or some other close relative judging by how similar their features were.

His lips tightened in distaste at the sight of her decked out in a revealing get up that he knew she’d never have chosen for herself; but it was the ornately carved silver collar that was clamped heavily around her neck that made his hair stand on end, a growl of outrage rumbling in his chest. It was only Blaine, squeezing his arm that brought him back to himself as their guest finally stood before them.

The vampires themselves were just as flashy as their thralls, though far more covered up. They were richly clothed and lavishly decorated with jewels and baubles that practically screamed their wealth, their pale skin glowing eerily in the fading light of dusk, eyes glittering cunningly despite their seemingly bored expressions.

The vampire who spoke first had hair so pale and fine it could have been spilled buttermilk, and a mouth so cruel Kurt couldn’t help a shiver as the man pinned him with an assessing stare and beatific smirk.

“Alpha, Matcă,” the vampire nodded to each in turn, somehow managing to maintain an air of superiority even as he offered gestures of respect. “I am Aurel, and I greet you on behalf of my father Balaur. I hope we are well met?”

“You are well met, Aurel” Blaine replied with a short nod of his own but Aurel was only feigning interest in the formal proceedings. He kept looking at Kurt - _watching_ him- and Kurt couldn’t help but be reminded of a snake, coiled in the grass waiting to strike. Part of him wanted to duck his head and step away from what was clearly a predator; humanity’s built in instinct for self-preservation far too ingrained to just dissipate despite the fact that he could no longer call himself human.

He buried the feeling deep reaching instead for the part of him that was wild, a pacing creature whose blood was beginning to thrum with anticipation. The wolf was not afraid. He stared back and Aurel’s gaze finally slipped passed him to settle upon Ian. The Vampire's soft smile went a bit sharp and Kurt felt a thrill of satisfaction that the wizard’s presence clearly was clearly upsetting the vampire male.

“Merlin, we are honored,” Aurel lied with honeyed tongue. “We did not expect the Guild to send someone so vaunted to oversee the proceedings.”

Whatever insult or barb was buried in Aurel’s words Ian met with nothing more than a wry twist of his lips. Aurel stepped back and Mike's father stepped forward to give his own greeting along with a woman whom he introduced as his Bride Julia. Mike's mother was a beautiful woman to be sure but when her eyes slid over the assembly and stuck on him he was reminded of the way a cat would stare at a canary in a cage.

*~*~*

_The torches in the great hall had been lit but the hall was still cold and the stone floor was colder still. The chill seeped through the linen of Gwyn's plain sheath, his lean frame shivering despite his best efforts to hold still. The sheath was the only garment he had been allowed to wear before the royal court with the charge of adultery hanging so ominously over his head._

_Sir Mordred and the rest of his accusers had demanded that Gwyn appear naked as was tradition, but Arthur had granted him a reprieve in this one small area. Not out of any genuine care on his part, Gwyn knew, but because the secret of Gwyn's sex had not yet been discovered and it would only mean further trouble for the crown if anyone outside of the Circle were to become privy to it._

_Oh, but wouldn’t it shock them all to know the truth he’d hidden all these years? The court did so love a good hanging. Why not make it a double?_

_‘Damn them all’, he thought as he staunchly ignored the sounds of their clothing rustling, their hissed whispers, and the feeling of their hot stares into his back. Had Gwyn been any other man, a little less a king in his own right, he might have stood and stripped before the entire court and left Arthur to face the fires of the Church; but it would also mean that Camelot would fall into the hands of Mordred, and no thirst for personal vengeance was strong enough to drive Gwyn to betray so utterly the kingdom he had fought for all these years._

_It did not keep him from wishing, deep in the darkest part of his heart that he could just that once be less of a man—though he had thought the same once before, when he had taken Lancelot to his bed all those years ago. He had indulged such a weakness then, and these were the fruits. A kingdom in tatters, two children estranged, his lover a fugitive, and he about to face judgment by the people he had given his life for._

_Damn them. Damn them all._

_He knew the picture he must have made: a tall, slim, delicate creature with too pale skin stretching over stubbornly aristocratic bones.  Those who dared to enter the great hall that morning and look upon the feet of the high table might mistake him for a vulnerable woman, true enough, but with the straightness of his back and the proud tilt of his head Gwyn would let none of them mistake him for anything but what he was._

_“Who stands before the court today?” Sir Kay asked, standing to begin the proceedings, voice flat and cool and Gwyn stood gracefully before his chains could be yanked._

_“I am Guinevere Mwynfawr, heir to the kingdom of Gwent, Lady of the White City. Queen of Camelot.”_

_“And of what crime do you stand accused?” Kay bore on, as unmoved by the proceedings as he had been by anything since the loss of his wife. It had been months since Gwyn had seen him stand on two legs, but he supposed the trial of the Queen was a big enough event to warrant it._

_“I am accused of betraying my husband” Gwyn answered, unflinching._

_“And how do you plead?”_

_Though the hall had been filled to the brim with the murmurings of the courtiers since before Gwyn had been brought before them it was deathly quiet now, every soul present holding its breath in wait for his response. But Gwyn paid them all no mind._

_Arthur looked fetching in his official robes sat upon his throne with the crown upon his golden head. He had the face of a man born to be king it seemed. Too handsome for its own good and eyes too soft and sweat a blue not to fall in love with. Even now they were calling to Gwyn with a need that bordered on desperation; a plea for forgiveness and that something more that Gwyn hadn't been able to give him since the earliest days of their failed mating._

_“Save yourself, Gwyn, for I cannot if you will not try.”_

_Words, just for him, unheard by the others and echoed in the blue of Arthur's eyes._

_“How shall I save myself Arthur? Shall I break my chains as Lancelot did? Will you set your guard upon me as you did he and shall more of our brethren die?” Gwyn accused silently and Arthur's hands gripped his arm rests in a white knuckled grip and his soft blue eyes took on a harsher glint. David rallying to face Goliath. Gwyn had always thought him beautifully brave and it was no different now. It was Arthur's strength of will despite the disadvantages of his birth that had won each of the knights in his Circle to him, won him their admiration and loyalty._

_There was still a part of Gwyn that wanted to smile for him, to tell Arthur that he understood what it must cost him to stand against his mate and do as the situation required for the good of the kingdom, tell him what a damnably good boy he was being. A big enough part that Gwyn's lips twisted in wry amusement; he was going to die after all, because Arthur had finally decided to stop being naughty._

_“Lancelot forced my hand! Think you I would have seen either of you hung for love of the other? Damn Lancelot, and damn you! You must lay down your pride, Gwyn, and do what needs done or by God I will not be able to spare you!”_

_The smile fell off of his face to be replaced by a cold sneer. He knew what Arthur intended. Bran had come to his cell the night before with gruesome warnings. Mordred had done all he could to insight the bloodlust of the court but still Arthur would pardon Gwyn’s crimes given a full confession and a satisfying enough show of repentance. To any other it would have seemed merciful. All Gwyn had to do after all was, as Arthur had so simply put it, lay down his pride._

_Yes… he had only to confess to this cruel hearted gathering of crows his sorrow and his guilt for having dared to love anyone besides his unfaithful mate, only to throw himself upon them for mercy and plead his wretchedness. He had only then to face a life locked away in shame behind convent walls, forever to be parted from the man who had shown him the truest of love. This was the mercy of the King._

_Gwyn dismissed Arthur from thought, turning his head just enough to search the crowd for his children and there... there was Galahad off to the right, wearing the king's colors, his mouth pinched and his face as set as stone; and there was Bran beside him, the fiercest of pleas in his eyes._

_For a moment he wavered, for their sake and no others._

_He would disappoint them, as he had since their birth, because even for them he would not betray Lancelot's love and tell the world that he was ashamed. He would never take that sort of mercy. He was as afraid of death as any other but he would greet it like the wolf, undaunted._

_So it came to be known, on that day Guinevere Mwynfawr returned her steely stare to those gathered in the king’s court and hissed, “Not Guilty.”_

*~*~*

The conclave was a short flimsy affair, over almost as soon as it began and relieving none of the tension building on either side. It was held in the ball room, so that the guard and those alphas of high enough standing within the pack could bear witness.  They stood on opposite sides of each other, forming two half circles around the table and chair that the house omegas had set up for Ian to oversee the proceedings and document it for the Guild Council’s records.

It was not the first time Ian had found himself in the middle of such a shit sandwich-pardon his French- nor would it be the last, and the old wizard had long since stopped being intimidated by the dramatics. He took his time taking his seat and preparing his notes, fussing about like an old grandpa sitting down to tea and completely ignoring the fact that the room was a match stick away from an all out war.

“Who stands before the gathered today?” The wizard finally announced the question like a proclamation and the farce began in full swing.

“I am Master Chang, of Coven Balaur.”

“And what is your grievance with Pack Westerville today?”

“Last moon, one of their wolves attacked my coven daughter. He attacked unprovoked, maiming her and leaving her for dead,” Master Chang recalled for the record. “She is now missing and we have reason to believe he is responsible for that as well as the deaths of several human women bearing her resemblance. These are the actions of a mad creature, and we insist appropriate action be taken.”  
  
His words were followed by angry growls from the pack wolves, their lithe forms bristling and shifting restlessly in contrast to the still forms of their vampire guests and the cold sneers that twisted many of their expressions.  
  
“I see. Is this wolf amidst those gathered here today?” Ian asked by route, eyes coming to rest on Kurt with the tiniest hint of amusement as the man in question stepped forward. He was scared, no way to conceal that with fear scent coming off him so heavily, but it was to his credit that his spine stayed straight and his head held proudly.

It was easy to remember another day long ago, when Ian had stood in a gathering such as this and watched another face a crowded hall full of enemies. It was all the proof one could need, that the flesh might be ephemeral but the soul; now that was something else altogether.

“He is,” Kurt answered for all to hear and Ian asked him to state for the record who he was.

If it gave him some private satisfaction when Kurt stood even straighter and announced that he was Kurt Hummel, Matcă of Pack Westerville, well that was his own affair wasn’t it?  Of all the heirs Blaine had given him the most difficulty pairing. Stubbornly refusing to even consider mating for far too long, constantly finding ways to be in danger of an early death, and then falling head over ass for the least available or suitable option he could find.

Well that was the soul for you. It didn’t change and Ian would not have had it differently. He had missed these particular two souls more than he’d ever admit to them (the hair brained fools) and this time he was keeping a much better handle on things. His personal touch had been required but by the stars he was going to see them through to the end, whatever mad ending that might be.

True it would have been a sweeter moment for Ian had Kurt not also forgotten the change in his surname, but heat of the moment being what it was Ian was willing to forgive. Rome hadn’t been built in a day.

“And how do you plead to this accusation?”

“Not guilty.”

The noise level immediately rose as the vampire’s hissed in protest and the wolves clapped and grunted their support in various degrees of enthusiasm. Chandler Kheil in particular seemed to think he was at some sort of sporting event what with the way he was heckling Master Chang. The vampire in question looked quietly murderous as he scoffed in Ian’s direction.

“As would any murderer. And yet the truth remains. He has killed one of us and many more besides. Alpha Anderson has broken faith with the treaty to protect him!”

The rabble rose to a dull roar and rolling his eyes Ian rapped his knuckles against the table, amplifying the sound with a little boost of magic.  
  
“Order, children order!”   
  
When things had finally quieted Ian addressed Kurt again.  
  
“Do you deny that you attacked Brittany Pierce last moon?” he asked.  
  
“No sir,” Kurt readily answered. “I did… but I was not in control of myself at the time.” He faltered, his gaze flicking back to Blaine for the barest of moments before he squared his shoulders and pressed on.

“I was human, or I thought I still was. I’d been bitten the month before by a rogue wolf and wasn’t aware of how it had changed me. The night of the attack, I’d gone to a club with my girlfriend Tina and her boyfriend. When I changed… I guess someone had put Tina in thrall and I thought she was in danger. I’m sorry it happened, but I’ve been led to understand a loss of control is common in the newly converted.”

“Yes, this of course is true,” Ian murmured his agreement as he dictated all that had been said. When he was done he raised his head to pin Kurt with a much harder gaze. “It is also not uncommon for some human minds to become twisted and break during conversion. Do you also deny the claim that you continued to hunt her, killing several other women who bore a resemblance to her?”

“I do.” Kurt answered just as readily. Before Ian could open his mouth to continue the processes Kurt had turned his sable head toward Master Chang and Aurel, meeting their glares head on with one of his own.

“They know who the real killer is. He’s one of them.”

There was an eruption of hissed oaths and rustling fabric as the vampires denied this, one young vampire losing enough of his cool to lunge forward with bared fangs and eyes a hot red glow.   
  
Ian tensed, but a bloody spectacle was avoided easily enough by the brutal and swift hand of Julia Chang as she grabbed the offending vampire by the throat and brought him to heel, the bones in his neck crunching disturbingly loud with the movement.  Even so the lycans in the hall growled in warning, anticipating the imminent fight with the kind of glee only wolves could feel and Ian could see that Blaine was just itching for a reason to end this the preferred way. Teeth and blood: lycan tested and lycan approved.

Ian called for order again, pouring more of his magic into the command to tamp down on the rising tempers.

“Is there any evidence to support this claim?!” He demanded to know, because it was well and truly time to end this farce. Right on cue a voice near the doors called out.

“I can provide evidence.”

It was suddenly quiet enough to hear a pin drop as Brittany Pierce made her way toward them, and if Ian took a little private pleasure from the absolutely murderous gleam in Aurel’s eyes. Well that was his own business, wasn’t it?

~*~*~

_Serpent Mounds, Bratton Ohio_

When the car finally stopped Cooper led Lina and Benito through a public park that looked to be closed for the evening. The security at the gate had waved them through without so much as glancing at them and Lina recognized the dull listless gaze of beings in thrall.

As the vehicle had slowed Benito had pressed closer to her, his timid thoughts brushing quietly against hers. “ _Where are we going mama?”_

The sign on the edge of the path read: This Way To Serpent Mounds.

“ _I am not certain piccolo. Stay close to mama. Do you hear? Do not let go of my hand_.”

Cooper had vaulted jubilantly from the car, barking at Mercedes to stay and keep guard even as he’d crossed to open the door for her and Benito. He’d beckoned them forward impatiently and since patience was a thing Cooper had always had in short supply Lina had complied without a fight.

There would be a moment for that, maybe a singular moment to assure her son’s escape, and she would watch for it; but it wasn’t then.

The burial mounds stretched as far as she could see in the shape of a twining snake, poised to swallow a giant circular mound. It was to that one that Cooper led them. Perched on the top was a wooden cage. It had two occupants already but it wasn’t the cage that held her attention. It was the stone table and the man standing in front of the crosses that made her freeze.

She couldn’t help her shudder of revulsion at first sight of the crosses. There were two of them already erect, two victims hanging from them in gruesome contortion, eyes already dull with death. There was a third on the ground waiting for someone else.

She placed her palm over Benito’s eyes and was thankful when he did not squirm or make any attempt to resist.

“Cooper,” the name was still thick in her mouth, foreign to them and what they had shared. “What is this place?”

“This beautiful Lina, is where I make all of our dreams come true.” Cooper crossed over to the stone table and the cloaked stranger. He smelled like a wizard, and a moment later it was confirmed when he picked up one of three stone bowls on the table and began pouring what looked like molten water onto the ground, all the while chanting words in what sounded like Latin. Perhaps Cooper had forgotten who she was, that Latin had been a part of her schooling since childhood; or perhaps he simply didn’t care what she overheard.

The water continued to glow after it was spilled and it did not spread like normal water. The wizard continued until he’d drawn a wide circle around then and the table, then he set the bowl aside.

“ _Ignem terrae_ , bind them,  _ignem inferni_  find them,” the wizard chanted calling upon the fires of hell and earth and as he did so the circle around them burst into flames. Benito jerked in her arms with a shriek and a whimper and she held him tighter to her trembling body. He was so still in her arms, his scent so sour with terror it sickened her. Cooper turned back from the wizard’s work to look at them and frowned, an expression of deep displeasure on his face. Tsking, he came to her side and wrapped his arms around her.

It was everything she could do not to burst into tears.

“Don’t be afraid. I promised that I would make you a queen, Lina,” he whispered into her ear. “It will be soon, but we’re missing a key player. What do you say Beautiful. Should we ask Kurt to come out to play?”

~*~*~*~*~*~

Mike had never seen his father this angry. It was in the cold dead expression of his eyes, even as his movements remained swift and purposeful as he dressed for dinner. His mother was assisting him, deceptively silent but Mike knew his parents and the intimacy of their bond. It was highly unusual for a vampire master of his father’s caliber to take only a single Bride. It said everything.

Though he dared not rise from his kneeling position on the floor he slowly reached across the carpet for Tina’s hand, softly gripping her trembling fingers in encouragement. Though he kept the movement as inconspicuous as possible he didn’t doubt his mother was aware of it. She always seemed to be aware of everything.

While Mike had been distracted with the possibility of imminent war he had not really noticed how unusually quiet Tina had been. When her strange mood had finally registered to him he’d tried to get to the bottom of it but she’d only become more distressed and more withdrawn the more he’d asked about it.

When they were walking through the woods, everyone’s focus on their lycan escort and the thick trees no doubt hiding more of their enemy, his Mother had suddenly appeared at his back and whispered into his ear.

“Someone has taken a bite out of your sweet _tatue_.”

One real look at Tina and he had known the truth.  It was his shame, that he hadn’t seen it before.

As his thrall and wearing his collar Tina should have been off limits to other vampires. Collars and the rules could always be broken but the power behind his family was not inconsiderable and few of his kind would have dared.

Whoever had done it had been powerful enough to not only break and repair the magic on Tina’s collar, they’d been strong enough to conceal their presence. Fooling his inexperienced eyes was one thing, fooling his natural instincts was something else entirely.

No vampire could tolerate another touching what they truly considered theirs, and Tina he wanted to be his in every way. The same way his mother belonged to his father. He didn’t think he wanted any others either.

Given the timing and the amount of power it must have taken he knew that the perpetrator had to be either his own father or someone above him. There were few in the coven and of them only two had had access to Tina in the last twenty-four hours.

What either Aurel or James could want with Tina he could guess: something to do with Kurt and what they were really doing here today. What his father might want he didn’t wish to contemplate. Likely a test. Despite its hypocrisy he made no secret of his disapproval of Mike’s wish to only take a single Bride, and thought his decision to release all his other thralls was ludicrous.

Whatever was planned for them Mike knew one thing. He had failed to protect Tina and it was a mistake he would not repeat. He was going to do what vampires seemed to do best: look out for his own interests.

“Your actions will bring trouble to the family Michael,” his father finally spoke, though he did not turn to look at him. His gaze was set fondly on Julia as she gently lifted his wrist and began fastening his cuff links. “But your mother has pointed out that they may yet save us, should Aurel and James fail in their endeavors.”

Mike released a slow breath of relief, clutching Tina’s hand all the tighter. The feeling was short lived, as his Father finally turned to look at him every last inch of him unforgiving.

“You had better hope for the latter. Now, would you like for your pretty _tatue_  to be present for your punishment or would you rather spare her?”

~*~*~

Jeff waited tensely outside the guest suite, senses on alert, waiting impatiently for the group of vampires inside to finish their preparations for dinner so that he could escort them to the dining hall.

Word had spread quickly among the pack that Kurt had been cleared of all charges against him. Blaine wasn’t even going to have to pay any fine since Brittany had been there to validate his claims and pardon him for her past injuries. Her testimony regarding her conversion and her Sire’s obsessive tendencies had blown major holes in any argument that Aurel could possibly make that Kurt was a rabid wolf, considering that a her sire was a known member of their coven.

Oh, they’d tried to make out like they had no idea where Brittany’s sire was and to discredit her claims that he nearby and responsible for the deaths of the women found in Master Chang’s box at the theater but apparently not all of them had gotten the memo. Master Chang’s son, shock of all shock’s, had done what none of them could have predicted and actually stood up to confirm Brittany’s testimony.

He’d blown the whistle on his coven, acknowledging James and his past crimes, confessing the crimes he’d committed in the past that they’d had to clean up and had not reported to the Guild. Whether or not the Guild was ever able to pin the murders on James, Balaur and his coven would have a lot to answer for.

Jeff had no idea why Chang had done it but he knew something about standing up against family. He didn’t envy the talk the guy was going to be having with his coven. It was part of the reason why he’d been grateful when Wes had asked him to be the Chang’s “escort”. He didn’t trust any of them as far as he could throw them, but if there was any chance of figuring out what their _real_  plans were for the evening, Michael Chang Jr was looking like the weak link in the chain.

He didn’t envy Chandler at all, who was helping Adam escort Aurel and his entourage around the house. _That_  man was a dangerous piece of work, and Jeff wasn’t looking forward to whatever dance he had planned for the guard.

It was very quiet inside the room. Almost eerily so. If the Chang’s were murdering their son for his big mouth they were doing it in some creative way that didn’t involve blood or sounds above a whisper.

_“Don’t think they can’t.  Be careful Jeff, you can’t trust vampires. They have no loyalties and they don’t care who they kill.”_  Nick’s warning was instant, warm and insistently pulling on their bond. Although he was still locked up in the safe house he could still see and catch occasional snippets through Jeff, who wasn’t making any effort to block him anymore.

What would be the point?

The bond was there. They’d already betrayed their packs for it and no doubt they were likely to die for it when this was all over. Nick’s response to that thought was as immediate as it was to the other.

_“You should run Jeff. Get the hell out of here while you still can.”_

Jeff snorted inelegantly, not bothering to reply to that. They both knew he wouldn’t. Everything that had ever mattered to Jeff Sterling was finally in one place and that place was about to go up in flames. Like hell he was running. Still, Nick’s worry was gnawing away at the bond. Jeff sent him as much confidence as he could.

_“We beat death once. I’m pretty sure Ian has a reason for that and until we’ve done whatever it is he wants us to do I don’t think we’re getting off that easy.”_

At that moment the door to the guest suite slipped open with a creak and Jeff snapped back to attention. Michael Chang (the junior) stepped out into the hall followed by a tiny human woman. The ridiculously posturing collar on her throat said she was a thrall and given that Jeff could smell all sorts of vampire voodoo stink on her he was betting she wasn’t just the occasional snack variety either.

“Can I help either of you? Dinner is not for another hour.” Jeff stared as pointedly at the door to their rooms as possible, insinuating his desire that they return to them as soon as possible with only a thin veneer of politeness. No need for an interspecies incident but Wes had made it very clear their vampire guests were to stay in their assigned rooms.

He expected Chang to answer because he’d never heard of a thrall with a mind of their own let alone any agency but the thrall was the one to step forward and sweet as pie ask if she could be granted a visit with Kurt.

Jeff blinked at her unsure if he’d heard correctly. This human plaything could not have just asked if she could meet the Alpha’s mate- like that was a _thing_ , like that was something any of them would allow. His disbelieving expression must have said it all because the woman flushed, and then tried to claim she knew him. Then it clicked. This must be Tina. The human friend who had gotten herself tangled up with a fang boy, the one Kurt had been trying to protect when he went feral on that daffy vampire woman. Jeff scowled at her.

“The Matcă is very busy. I’m sure you’ll see him at dinner.”

“Can you just ask him please?!” the woman insisted and Jeff was taken back by the intensity of the plea. She looked frightened and desperate. She was a friend of Kurt’s. It was possible she knew something. Then again she was still a thrall and her masters could use her to hurt Kurt.

“I am confident that Kurt would like to see Tina,” Chang finally spoke up. He had a grip on Tina’s arm, and Jeff didn’t like the way she kept flinching away from it. “Would you please inquire for us?”

It was a command, and unless Jeff could come up with a good reason not to he risked offending their guests. Wincing he reached for Wes drawing his alpha-master’s attention away from the stolen moment with Emma to the situation at hand. He could feel Wes close, looking through his eyes…assessing.

It was a long moment before he received a reply.

“ _Kurt wants to see her. Joseph will be there in a moment to relieve you._ ”

~*~*~*~*~

The kitchen was like a bee hive, a hot swarming bee hive, as the ovens baked and Tira’s staff bustled to and fro getting dinner ready to put on the table.

“Madame Bedel?” she missed it the first time, the voice was so quiet but when he spoke again the kitchen head started in surprise and looked to find Steven Evans standing just behind her with the same wooden expression he’d worn all day.

“Yes, what is it Stevie?” She winced at the snap in her voice but the boy, bless his him, didn’t appear to be phased by it. Tira doubted anything was getting through the thick fog that the young omega was in.

“Aurel, the vampire master. He wants a drink brought to his room.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake” Tira huffed. She was too busy to deal with the personal demands of their undoubtedly rude, not to mention, spoiled guests. Gesturing towards one of the long tables where whine had been set to chill she instructed, “take it in one of the silver goblets dear. The gold are strictly for supper.”

The boy nodded silently and moved dazedly towards the cabinet where they stored the cups and dishes. Tira sighed. She hoped, after this ordeal with the vampires was through, that some help could be found for the omega. He clearly wasn’t well.

~*~*~*~*~

_‘Please help me! Can anybody hear me?!’_

She could hear herself screaming, feel every spike of terror that accompanied each and every step her body took as it followed dutifully behind the blond teenager who was bringing her to Kurt.

At one time, Tina would have traded a limb for the chance to see Kurt and see for herself that he hadn’t been harmed by Blaine and the rest of the werewolves; but now she’d give anything for just the slightest bit of muscle control. If she’d had it she would have grabbed the nearest sharp object and hacked off her own feet.

She’d tried to beg Mike with her eyes not to listen to her, not to ask that she be allowed to see Kurt but he’d mistaken her anxiety for fear of his father. Of course she was worried about Mike being punished but his father wasn’t likely to kill him and more immediately there was the issue of the ticking time bomb inside of her. A bomb it seemed that everyone knew about but no one knew where to find.

Except her. Because that vampire, _James_ , he’d cornered her and he’d…

Tina shuddered and the blond lycan looked back at her, suspicion and worry warring for dominance on his face.

“Are you okay?” He asked and Tina tried to shake her head, tried to do something other than nod meekly but she couldn’t. She was a puppet on strings.

~*~*~

“I don’t like it Kurt.” Blaine stated, and not the first time, as he paced the floor of their bedroom.

Kurt fought not to roll his eyes because no matter how irritated he was tempted to become with Blaine for repeating the same sentiment over and over again, he really did understand the stakes and the potential danger they were all in.

“I know.” Blaine’s nerves were like a live thing wriggling inside his gut (never mind Kurt’s own worries) so it was impossible for Kurt _not_  to know his feelings. “But we agreed that Tina, being one of my oldest friends, is our best chance of getting any Intel on what they might be planning. We should at least try.”

He didn’t bother mentioning again any of his personal desires- like wanting to see his friend and assure her well being considering the company she was in and the battle they were all expecting to break out- because no matter how much Blaine wanted to be considerate of his feelings, Kurt wasn’t naive enough to think that was going to sway him much right now.

“Fine, but why don’t you wait until after we’re through meeting with Ian.”

“Because, it’s important you not rush strategizing with Ian and the others, and it’s equally important I talk to Tina before dinner,” Kurt replied as he tightened the belt on his kilt. He’d showered after the last of their guests had been received, because as fantastic as their little quickie had been earlier he wasn’t as keen as Blaine seemed to be to go the whole evening with the scent of their activities on his skin.

“You said yourself that dinner is when they are most likely to make their move.”

“You should be with us when we strategize” Blaine insisted and this time Kurt did roll his eyes, because he could tell that Blaine’s protests were more about a desire to keep him close than any real help he expected Kurt to be in the battle strategy department.

“We both know Wes is way more qualified in that area and that I don’t need to physically be there to be up to date on what you guys decide. Talking to Tina  _is_  how I can help Blaine, you know it is. If anyone has heard anything useful it’s her and this might be my one chance to speak to her without interference.”

“It’s also a great chance for them to get at you Kurt.”

“Tina would never-“

“Tina is Michael Chang’s thrall and what she would or wouldn’t do is no longer relevant,” Blaine interjected with heat and Kurt gritted his teeth, pushing down the rise in aggression and the strange jab of hurt he felt. It was the way Blaine and the others talked about thralls, as if they were spoiled meat and not people. People quite possibly in need of help, or even people who were perfectly happy to place themselves in a vampire’s care. Tina had always seemed so certain of her choice and of Mike’s affections.

“Mike isn’t … He doesn’t control her like that.” At least he never had in the past. It had always been a worry of his when Tina had brought up her vampire beau in the past, but she’d always insisted that Mike was not the creepy controlling kind the movies and the government warned about.

“Kurt they’re _here_ because Mike took her will away. He did it once, why wouldn’t he do it again?”

Kurt had to take several deep breaths and to remind himself that he didn’t really know Mike, and that he himself had always had reservations about what Tina was getting herself into. Coven Balaur would not hesitate to hurt them and Mike owed his loyalty to them.

“It’s worth the risk,” he reminded them both. “Even if she tries something, I’m stronger and faster now. We’re still in the house, help is a literally a shout away, and Jeff will be here.

Kurt could tell that Blaine still wanted to argue, that Kurt could have a legion of burly alphas guarding him and Blaine would still not be on board with any of Balaur’s people coming within glaring distance of him. It was a warm realization, but not exactly a helpful one. He pulled Blaine to him by the shoulders, placing a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth with fondness.

“Thralled or not, she’s one woman against two wolves Blaine. I’ll be fine.”

~*~*~*~

“What’s  _she_ doing here?” Wes Montgomery snapped no sooner had Santana taken her first step into Blaine’s study. He was staring pointedly at Brittany so it was obvious that she was the she in question. Brittany hesitated hovering in the doorway and Santana grabbed her arm, pulling her into the room as she tossed a glare at Wes over her shoulder.

“If Anderson wants me at this little huddle it means Britt is coming too. He can deal with it.”

Even though Blaine had assured her that the Merilin had given them spells to prevent the leeches teleporting within the house Santana wasn’t risking leaving Brittany alone any time soon, not after she’d pissed all over coven loyalty and put a nice little red dot in the center of her chest.

She was about to close the door behind them but at that moment one of the house omegas came around the corner. He was carrying a tray with a fancy cup on it, obviously on his way to deliver someone’s drink.

She couldn’t say what it was that happened. Her abuela would have claimed it was her third eye, a gift inherited from her father’s people. If she had still been in Puerto Rico a little girl sitting at the feet of her father’s mother as she crushed the Cohoba into fine powder, that abuela would have cupped her cheek and called her _bruja_.

What happened was: the omega boy came around the corner. Nothing in his pace or his demeanor to draw a second glance, but the blond strands of his hair sticking to the skin of nape and brow with sweat and beginning to curl. No outward sign of distress, no scent of turmoil and his brow beaded his hair curling.

She saw him. Saw the cup so carefully balanced on the tray he carried its contents gently swishing with each step. Blood red wine. But it wasn’t pure. There was something oily and insidious swirling inside of it. Something dangerous.

She was moving before she could think, darting into the hall to intercept the boy. Brittany called out her name as she grabbed the omega by the arm sending the tray and its load toppling.  Her hand burned where it touched the boy’s skin, as if he was radiating heat but he did not react to her or her sudden attack. He just stood there staring blankly, his breaths increasingly shallow. It was as if she wasn’t there at all.

“Release him! Right now Lopez,” Blaine’s voice. A command her body obeyed with no input from her. He and Ian were coming toward them from the other end of the hall.

“Santana! What the hell are you doing? That came from Rachel. Wes and the others had rushed after her. There were four or five faces now ogling her with concern and unease but Santana’s gaze was glues to the floor, where the spilled wine was spreading thick and black, inching toward her like creeping fingers.

“ _Salvarnos del mal_ ”. The words came to her from memory, from her abuela leaning over the body of a young woman from a neighboring village fighting for life as she was caught in the grips of a wicked curse and the darkness tried to cling to her.

“Santana?” a gentle voice and an even gentler hand touched her shoulder. She tore her gaze away from the wine, looked up to find Brittany there pale and worried. Santana blinked, sucking in harsh breath ad followed her gaze back to the floor. It was just wine now. Just red and wet and thin on the floorboards, nothing black or strange about it.

“There is lead in the wine,” Brittany stated softly with a wrinkle of her nose. “Why is there lead in the wine?”

“That is a very good question,” Ian murmured as he came and knelt before the trembling omega. He still hadn’t moved, hadn’t really looked at anything or anyone since Santana had sprang at him.

“Lead? Like the metal?” Adam asked from the door and Brittany turned to nod her head at him slowly, the gesture tentative like a child afraid of being scolded.

“Yes. I can’t see it but I can smell it.”

“I can’t” Adam immediately grouched and Brittany flinched.

“It’s lethal to vampires. So it smells funny,” she replied as if that explained everything and Blaine frowned taking a deep sniff as Ian continued to inspect the omega. He was running a hand over him, murmuring something intelligibly. She finally came out of her daze enough to piece it all together and now that she had she was pissed. She wasn’t suicidal enough to attempt to touch Blaine or anything but she grabbed Britt by the arm, shoving her behind her for protection and bared her teeth at him, the only warning he’d get before she shifted and went all Cujo on his ass.

“What the hell are you playing at?!” She growled nodding at the omega. “Britt’s right. That little cocktail of his was full of ready vampire poison! Who was it for?”

She didn’t think Blaine was callous enough to try and murder Brittany with so many witnesses, and especially after the part she’d played in helping him today but she didn’t think he was stupid either, and murdering any of his other guests would have been asking for an inter species war the likes this planet hadn’t seen since the dark ages.

“Exactly Santana,” Blaine plucked the thoughts right out of her head and she snapped her teeth at him. _Stay the fuck out!_  She so wasn’t about any of this magic bullshit right now. She didn’t care whether Blaine had the soul of a hundred dead kings or god himself, she wanted to know what the hell was going on!

Blaine to his credit didn’t flinch or rise to meet her aggression. He just nodded grimly and gestured for Ian to bring the omega into the study. The others watching from the doorway parted like the red sea as they came through. Santana kept Brittany close to her, refusing to move until they were last ones through so there would be a clear exit. Anderson definitely noticed but he allowed it. His attention mostly on Ian and the omega boy he’d laid out on top of Blaine’s desk.

“You’re right Santana, lead _is_  ready vampire poison,” Blaine announced for the benefit of the others. She hadn’t noticed him picking up the cup in the hall but it was in his hand now and he was examining it with a dark scowl. “It’s lethal to humans after a period if it gets into the blood stream and is not particularly traceable by scent. A small liquefied amount could easily escape detection and is almost immediately lethal to the vampir.”

“But why?” Wes asked frowning at the cup in Blaine’s hands. “Vampires have natural healing abilities like us. Why would a few drops of lead-”

“It prevents our bodies from absorbing iron,” Brittany interrupted and the room went quiet to stare at her. It wasn’t lost on any of them the gravity of what she was sharing with them, or how vulnerable the knowledge would make her. “Iron and sugar. It’s the two things we live off of. We can only get it in the right form when we drink blood.”

“Their cells multiply so fast, a few drops… whoever drank it would be dead in a matter of hours,” Blaine finished with a sigh, setting the cup down with a vicious thunk. “It’s obvious isn’t it? You’ve already said it Santana. If anyone besides us had learned the treaty would be considered violated. ”

None of them said it but they all knew. Bye bye Guild protection. With that kind of a trespass Balaur could pretty much wipe his ass with Anderson and the Guild would look the other way. No one would believe that some little omega in Blaine’s house had gone rogue and gotten the idea to poison the enemy on his own, and Aurel wasn’t likely to wait around for it to matter even if someone did.  _Santana_  wasn’t even sure she did.

“Alpha Anderson, if you didn’t arrange this who did?” Berry, bless her loud mouth, demanded to know. Her suspicion clear as day.

“Isn’t that obvious!” Adam snapped, his affront over the implied accusation in her words practically permuting off his skin. “Aurel and his minions arranged this. They must have him in thrall.”

“We can sense vampire magic Adam,” Wes immediately rebutted.

“And that’s not vampire voodoo Crawford. The boys got black magic all over him,” Santana interjected glaring accusingly at the Merlin’s back. He ignored her but she wasn’t going to let this drop. He was the only magic user in residence, the only one capable of doing something like this.

“Who has had access to him?” Blaine asked. She wanted to believe his sincerity in finding the truth but everyone knew how closely the Anderson’s were tied to the Merlin. Hey daddy had gotten himself a pet wizard too and a few grand ideas that had fucked everyone over. Maybe the apple didn’t fall that far from the tree.

“He’s been in the kitchens, Alpha” Wes was answering. “I thought it best since the attack for him to be close to his sister. All of our guests movements are being closely watched. None of them have been anywhere near the kitchens.”

At that moment Ian made a low humming noise and Wes stopped speaking to join the rest of them in watching the wizard. He was passing a hand over the omega’s eyes now, a faint light emanating from his skin and lighting the boy’s face. Santana noticed that the boy’s pupils neither followed the motion nor shrank in response to the light.

“The answer seems clear doesn’t it?” Ian asked but Santana was positive he wasn’t actually expecting an answer.

“A few days ago Steven Evans was attacked and presumably molested and maimed by an unidentified alpha. Today he appears, to give your enemies a convenient excuse to declare war on you.”

“But how can that be?” Blaine immediately denied. His frustration was palpable in the room as he paced. “I don’t deny it is what I had already begun to suspect, but Ian it just… it’s impossible. Even distracted by Kurt’s heat there is no way a vampire could step foot in Westerville without my knowing. The land wouldn’t have allowed it.”

Ian stood, closing his palm and the strange light that had been growing there disappeared. He sighed tuning to look at Blaine with something ominous in his eyes.

“Unless it was one of the heirs.”

“Cooper.” Blaine breathed the name like a curse the same instant Santana thought it.

Ian nodded and responded quietly, “As I said before. The magic soaked into the soil here answers to your blood Blaine. Cooper shares that blood whether he is lycan, vampire, or some mix of the two. He could sneak past your defenses for a short interval. Long enough to accost young Steven.”

“I still don’t understand Merlin,” Adam interjected quietly. “Even if Cooper could get to him in the woods it doesn’t explain how he could put a spell on him. It’s not like he could sneak a wizard in. Heir or no heir Blaine is Alpha here. That kind of disturbance…”

“I’d have noticed,” Blaine finished decisively and Ian nodded.

“You would have.” They watched with growing confusion as Ian reached for the letter opener on Blaine’s desk, as he sharpened the blade with a flick of his wrist and jolt of magic, as he slowly began to cut away at the silent teenager’s uniform.

“Had Cooper intended to sneak anyone besides himself into the forest with great power and ill intentions in their heart, you most certainly would have noticed. Which is why the spells had to cast outside of the forest, and the host oblivious to his own intentions.”

“Stevie used to apprentice in town,” Blaine agreed, his brow furrowing in deep thought, his shoulders taught with tension. “But even still it’s impossible. He’s sworn in. Without the heat to distract everyone we would have known if something happened to him. There were never any problems or irregularities in behavior or routine reported. No one could have gotten to him in town without someone seeing or feeling something Ian.”

“And no one did,” Ian agreed all too gravely as he continued to cut away the omegas clothes and Santana’s stomach began to sink. She just knew she wasn’t going to like this. Apparently Wes agreed because he’d just sucked in a breath and made a face like someone had grabbed him by the intestine and tried to rip it out his ass.

“The body Blaine,” Wes croaked. “We never got a chance to identify it.”

Now Blaine looked just as sick and Santana’s skin prickled as his anger seemed to fill the room, pushing out all the oxygen and leaving no room for anything but the hot harsh feel of it.

“Jeff was convinced it was one of us. It was wearing an omega uniform.”

“I believe Mr. Montgomery that you’ll find the body under our friend Sebastian’s house belongs to Steven Evans attacked and killed that fateful morning in the forest.” Ian finished with cutting away the omegas clothes stood back. “Which leaves us with only one question to answer.”

Yeah. Santana thought. If Steven Evans was dead who the hell was this?

TBC


	38. Symphony Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything comes together in the worst way. The fight for Westerville has begun, and its young Alpha pair will have to prove their mettle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know I thought with how streamlined each portion of the activity had to be that this chapter would be shorter than the others. I forgot how MANY pieces I had on the board. While this reads quickly it is by no means short so brace yourselves. WARNINGS FOR: Graphic violence. Minor!Character death.

Chandler did not have a nose like Jeff Sterling and at that moment he didn’t know whether to curse that fact or be thankful for it. Positioned as he was at the end of the hallway separating the room that the vampire master called Aurel had been given and the rest of the wing his nose was saturated in the pungent scent of vampire- a hair raising smell that did nothing to alleviate the tension roping up his back and the sick feeling roiling in his belly.

He had to stand straight and tall though because even though Adam couldn’t see him his alpha-master would know if he slouched at his post or let his fears get to him. Hell if he’d let all that knot-headed alpha talk about betas and omegas only being good for the bedroom find any ground. Vampires didn’t scare him (accept they really did) and he’d be fine on his own without his alpha holding his hand for five minutes.

Okay, sure it would have been nice to turn back the clock and find himself wrapped up in his alpha’s arms, all warm and content and thoroughly made love to; but it was important that Adam and the Alpha have a chance to meet before dinner when he’d deemed the chances of attack (if it was to come at all) would be lowest. It wasn’t faith in their guests that gave the Alpha such confidence but faith in their continued fear of the Guild and open violation of the treaty. Chandler trusted Blaine and all, but he was having a much harder time finding similar confidence.

Aurel terrified the piss out of him if he was honest.  He’d never been as close to wolfing out as he’d been when the guy had yanked the service bell and he’d actually had to talk to him. His eyes were cruel and he smelled like misery. Who the hell smelled like misery!

 ' _Chandler?’_ the protégé cringed as his alpha-master’s gentle concern reached for him and the teen straightened up, cutting of the soft whine he hadn’t even been realizing was gathering in the back of his throat. While there was no shame in being scared, it wasn’t as if anyone had forced him to join the guard. True enough when he’d first put in his request getting a chance to be close to Adam every day had been a major sell (twelve and ripe for his change into sexual maturity Adam had been just about his only thought back then) but nobody got through their preliminary trials without walking away with a clear understanding of what being part of the pack guard was truly about.

He had persevered through the pain of his trials because he had wanted to do more with his life than find an alpha and pop out babies. He had wanted to serve the Alpha and protect the pack the way that Adam always had and the way his sire before him had before he’d been tied to the den. Because being a part of a pack meant being a part of something far bigger than himself.

That was something to live for. More importantly, it was also something to die for.

~*~*~*~

Despite an abundance of available lamps the room was dark where Aurel sat, his thralls and many attendants splayed about at his feet, bodies tense with the wait despite their stillness.

It had been twenty minutes since he had wrung the bell for a drink, ten minutes past time since the boy should have arrived with it and still nothing. Aurel opened his mouth, breathing in slow and shallow for the barest of moments before releasing the breath in a quiet measured hiss.

If he could have cursed James Dean he would have cast a curse so black upon his name that his decedents would feel it for centuries to come.

Aurel’s father had taken a calculated risk, agreeing to a role in the vampire master’s schemes. Aurel had always been wary to trust James with such a venture, a venture that if failed would mean the end of an era of relative peace, and result in heavy losses for the coven.

The Family had grown stronger over the years, coiled as it was in the dark spaces where the Guild Council no longer saw fit to roam, growing like a tumor in the underbelly of the world. But they were not strong enough yet to strike in the light of day and withstand the Guild’s retaliation; not so long as they had their guard dog Anderson to call upon for aide.

They needed the crown, curse the bloody thing, and to get it they needed James. It was still a bitter truth to swallow for Aurel, that a virtually covenless upstart had the capability to do what none of them could. Aurel would have given just about anything to take Blaine’s power and deliver Anderson’s head to his father. Given just the chance he would bend the Wizard’s guild to its knees – even if it was just to have the pleasure of breaking them – but he remembered all too well the sting of rejection when he had dared to say as much at the temple and that Sept Sister had turned to him with the fires of hell in her eyes and with the voice of the dark ones predicted that he would die before the crown ever touched his head.

_“You have not the right blood. No magic can change the mud in your veins to wine, no matter how you try. You need one with the same blood as that which fills the heart of your enemy. This is the blood with the key to open doors.”_

He’d been dismissed so soundly the memory was still enough to burn through him like hastily swallowed whiskey. When they’d hauled James before the Sept sisters they’d smiled upon him.

_“This is the key.”_

It was a pity that their key could not be better controlled. James had not stuck to their plans and therefore there was no one with the capability to move between the pieces on the board and assure their victory. Aurel had no way to know what was going on outside his room let alone if it was prudent to attack or escape. He did not know why James had felt Anderson’s she-bitch was worth the risk to their plans but his departure from Westerville left Aurel with few options.

He had only two choices: to wait and hope that Ian and his guard dog found no evidence to detain them, returning home with shame heavy upon him; or to risk it all.

There was no going back from the latter and such a choice would put the entire coven at risk if the Family didn’t support them, but Aurel knew that he would not live long either if he chose the first option. Balaur did not suffer failure, especially not from his sons.

It was a good thing then, that Aurel was always thinking a step ahead.

There was one within the house, free to move about. They would see soon enough why the name of Aurel was one to fear.

~*~*~*~

They would call him a traitor if they knew. If they knew how he had waited and watched from the shadows, pushing and prodding the pieces of the grand game to reflect his own design – they would call him a traitor to the pack and the Alpha would see to his death. They could not know what the Anderson Alphas had taken from him, taken from them all, or how he had weighed and measured the consequences of his actions over and over again in his mind and failed to come to any different conclusion.

It was for love of the pack that he made his every move. They could not know how deeply that love ran.

Nor could they know as he moved about the house what his true aims were.  Most of the guard did not even bother to question him, but there was a single moment when he almost feared the end of his crusade would come at the hands of a protégé. The boy stopped him in the hall to question his destination, after all the Alpha had placed them all on strict lock down. It would not be safe to move about the house until their guests were gone. So where was he going and so urgently?

There were any number of reasons why he would need to hustle from here to there, no matter what orders had been given, and children no matter what their rank within the guard were still only children. They wanted to place their trust in authority just as badly as they wanted to rebel against it.

He gave his excuse and he was believed. And why not? He was pack after all and trusted. Everything he ever did was for them and that would not change. Especially not today.

~*~*~*~

_If Steven Evans is dead, who the hell is this?_

Santana’s thoughts echoed through the room, reinforced by every last gaze that turned to Ian as he stepped away from the now bare omega laying on top of Blaine’s desk.

It had become the most important question to answer and it was a terrifying feeling to know that the answers were not within his reach. Try as he might Blaine could not sense anything wrong with Stevie through the pack bond. He was just simply there. Not a warm or comforting presence but nevertheless there.

The more he examined him the stranger it became. He never would have noticed it without cause to take a deeper look but Steven’s aura was different. It was off in a way that could not be explained in words. His presence undeniable on the surface but his person withheld behind something shadowy and opaque. He was like a small still pond whose depths might prove surprisingly deep if one was foolish enough to step in; the waters beneath the surface inky and cloying.

It reeked of magic. The sort of dark and powerful magic he hadn’t touched since his father had died.

Blaine shivered, his heart throbbing in his chest for a moment before he felt Kurt’s touch in the center of his being doing its best to banish the debilitating fear that had begun to creep inside him. They had work to do.

“It’s time we figured that out,” he said to them all.

“I have my suspicions as to the boy’s real identity,” Ian informed him as he raised his hands. Before he began whatever spell would counter against the magic already holding the body he said gravely, “I will need a bit of blood from the Evans girl,” Ian began and Wes looked quickly to Blaine for confirmation before nodding and exiting the room on swift feet. He did not want the girl hurt or worried and was thankful for Kurt’s voiceless assurance that he would see to her comfort while Wes extracted what they needed.

“Why do you need Stacey’s blood?” Blaine asked warily. Blood magic was nothing to meddle with. It had been Ian’s first lesson to him and his father’s last.

“Because when dealing with blood magic, blood is always the answer.” Ian explained, and before Rachel could even get her mouth fully open to ask he explained further.

“When Steven Evans swore his oaths he swore his blood to you and became a son of the land, but as he was not born here there is a level of distance… it leaves loopholes.  If someone else were a convincing enough Steven Evans, it is possible they could take his blessings.”

Adam wrinkled his nose thoughtfully and asked slowly, still piecing his thoughts together even as he spoke, “So you’re saying anyone could come here and get past the safeguards if they transformed into one of us?”

“No,” Rachel shook her head adamantly, confusion coloring her tone as she tried to grasp the implications of what Ian was telling them. “That would be a rather poor safeguard if all it took was a bit of transfiguration, wouldn’t it? Sure you can transform the body to look like someone else, but there’s got to be something in the blood that would give it away. You said blood was the key, so even if someone changed their outward appearance it wouldn’t change their blood. The magic would still know you weren’t you. ”

“Exactly right, Miss Berry” Ian nodded and across from them Santana huffed.

“If there is magic strong enough to corrupt the crown, I doubt there isn’t a spell strong enough to pull off a blood transfusion,” she muttered darkly. Blaine stiffened. He thought he was beginning to understand and he did not like the results. Ian’s eyes were boring into his, as ever seeing too much and allowing for no barriers or pretenses to hide behind. For an uncomfortable moment Blaine felt like a boy again, caught backing away from shadows in the dark and covered in the stink of fear when he was meant to be brave.

 “For a transformation of this exact nature to have even a chance of success Blaine, the castor would have to choose his host very specifically.” Ian said to him, seemingly plucking his fears right from his mind. “Not just of the same blood as one of your sworn but in their immediate family and of the same sex. A twin for the obvious reason would be best, but baring that…”

“A brother,” Wes finished as he placed the cup with Stacey’s blood in Ian’s hands. “Stacey and Stevie come from a rouge family. They were escorted here by a brother about nine years ago. Name of Sam. He has visited a few times.”

Wes had always been an astoundingly good Beta when it came to remembering details of that sort but Blaine was momentarily shocked that he could remember such a thing. There were too many students for Blaine to personally grant each of their relatives’ visitation rights and even Wes had to delegate much of the work to the Headmaster and the Den-Mothers. While it was true that all final approvals had to come through him, it was a testament to the level of dedication with which he performed his duties.

“I believe I can undo what has been done to this boy,” Ian assured him but there was a darkness in his expression, a warning as he continued, “but our adversary whoever and wherever they may be, will not let go of their prize as easily as you might hope. You may not like the result.”

That, Blaine knew, could mean any number of things. The boy (Sam if that was who he really was) could die. And still a choice had to be made. It was maddening, How was he supposed to choose when he had no idea what the cost would be if he did, and no idea what it would be if he didn’t? Ian and the others were all looking to him, waiting for his decision and it was the expectation on all of their faces that he feared the most. It had been that way from the beginning, since that night when he’d stood up on trembling legs and first given the Alpha call. The youth he’d managed to free from the forest had answered and they’d looked at him the same way: confident, as if they couldn’t see the frightened boy before them for what he truly was (a boy shooting blindly).

_“I think they saw it right.”_

_‘Kurt?’_

Blaine did not consciously reach; his reaching was a thing of instinct, a process of his basic function. Pressure came from without and initiated a response from within. Within him there was the man, the wolf, and _mângâiere_.

Kurt was there, hand over his as their fingers curled around the trigger.

_‘Go’._

The shift that came over him was immediate. The others reacted to it with quick breaths and straightened backs as Blaine met Ian’s waiting gaze with unflinching resolve. He nodded his consent and Ian turned his focus back to the boy. Whatever came of that action he was prepared to face it. He knew his direction and felt it reflected back at him in the soul of his mate: the desire for reckoning.

It had started with Balaur and his father but together, he and Kurt were going to end it. They ruled here and their continued rule was the only allowed outcome.

~*~*~

“Begin” Alpha Anderson commanded, and Adam shivered as the power behind his voice crackled against his senses. His heart began to pick up speed in his chest as he and the others formed a semi-circle behind the Alpha’s back. He and Wes moved with wordless communication each of them driven by the same urge to protect, the same need to answer the pull in their blood. The outsiders, Rachel Brittany and Santana, were a step behind but they fell into line just as neatly as if they had always had a place there.

Adam could not say what it was that unified them in those few moments as the room swelled with magic and light splashed their faces as the Merlin chanted and waved his hands about in complex motions. Perhaps it was the power in Blaine’s blood, the magic of the land doing what it had been shaped to do; or perhaps it was simply the effect of witnessing something older and far more sacred than even that.

The bond between mates was the strongest and most sacred thing a wolf could know. He’d seen wolves do incredible things – terrible even – for want or love of a mate. Everyone knew mated wolves were strongest, especially in the case of an Alpha pair but of course you couldn’t really _know_ until you saw it in action.

One minute Blaine had been there, just Blaine as they had always known him and then in an instant he had become more. He and Kurt – for Kurt’s presence was so undeniable it was nearly physical – had taken control of the room. There was a startling ring of blue around the amber of Blaine’s eyes, a paler blue even than the flashes of light emanating from Ian’s palms as he waved them and shouted in a foreign language, “Explicare Carnem!”

The cup filled with dark blood rose suddenly, its contents leaping from the chalice into the air where it turned an incandescent blue and rained over the body on the table in glittering drops.

For a moment everything was still. Adam watched with baited breath, but as nothing further occurred and Ian slowly began to lower his arms he began to wonder if perhaps all of their speculation had been wrong. And then the body of Stevie Evans began to twitch, and then suddenly to writhe, the boys eyelids snapping open to reveal nothing but obsidian orbs as he continued to violently convulse.

With a sharp intake of breath Ian bellowed for them to get ready and yelled another curse in that strange tongue. Blue bands of light wrapped around the boy’s arms and legs just as he jerked upright torso twisting nearly in a circle as he turned to scream at them with gaping maw.

Adam wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be getting ready for but he’d seen more than enough to want to be out of his weaker skin and on four legs. He shed his tartan as quickly as he could manage – the clinking of belts hitting the floor one after the other sounded strangely melodic in his ears – and shifted almost as quickly. The momentary lapse in visibility nearly cost him his life. The world was still weaving itself together before his eyes and his paws still finding their purchase as his ears exploded with the sound of an unholy shriek. He was wincing as something struck him violently against the side – it was joltingly cold to the touch – and he crashed to the floor with a cry of pain.

He twisted upright just soon enough to get a glimpse of a wolf, and yet _not_ a wolf, lunging for his front in what was sure to have been a killing blow if not for the slight form of the vampire woman sliding between them. Her fangs had extended to a wicked length, the nails on her hands sharpened to battle talons as she and the creature collided. For all that it had the shape and movement of a wolf it was clearly not natural. Its form was pitch black, as if where it walked it absorbed all light and color from the world- a black so deep it could only be called a void. Where its eyes should have been there was only the hellish glow of flame but the teeth that glistened in its widening mouth were very solid and very real and Adam flinched as the thing collided with Brittany and a sick crunching sound followed the sudden smell of blood in the air.

“Brittany!” Santana screamed the woman’s name from somewhere off to the left as Adam scrambled to his feet. Before he could do much more Brittany flung the creature away from herself with an unbelievable show of strength for a woman of her size, proving beyond a doubt that she was all vampire despite her deceptive aura of innocence. She had undoubtedly just saved his life so Adam was begrudgingly thankful for that fact.

The creature hit the floor on its side and slid a few feet before it sprang back up; but though they both braced for it the creature did not resume the attack. It turned tail and bolted, leaping over the desk and crashing through the window in a shatter of glass.

It only took him a second to glance over at Stevie’s body to confirm what his ears had already told him. There was more of that thick black smoke emanating from a hole in his chest and more of those things leaping from out of its depths, eight to be exact, and those numbers were not good.

 _“Merlin! What the hell are these things?”_ Blaine demanded to know and Ian raised his palms again, shooting one of the creatures with a blast of wizard’s fire.

“Wraiths,” the wizard answered even as the creature that had been consumed by the blue flames was replaced by another. “And they shall keep coming so long as the gateway between this world and the other remains open.” Adam had only to follow the Merlin’s eyes to the omega’s body on the table – only it wasn’t Stevie anymore but an older unknown alpha laying in his place – and note the decidedly unnatural chasm opening ever wider in his torso to figure out what he meant by gateway.

When Blaine threw back his head and howled Adam’s already furiously pumping heart began to gallop, every nerve he had lighting up as if plucked.  He knew why a moment later as he began to feel an increasing note of distress over the pack bond mingling with pain and growing terror. They were being attacked and not just here within Blaine’s study.

There wasn’t a wolf alive who didn’t know that call and none in hearing distance who wouldn’t answer it.

 _“To me!”_ Blaine did not say who but Adam knew better than to ignore the tug in the center of his chest. Just as before he and the others moved in unison forming a half circle behind him.

 _“Brittany?”_ Blaine did not take his eyes away from the growling shadows but the vampire woman seemed to understand. Despite the low whine that Santana emitted the vampiress turned with blinding speed and followed the path their escaped foe had taken through the window. It unsettled Adam that Blaine should choose to trust one of Balaur’s own in this moment but he recognized that they had little choice.

 _‘We’ll handle the wraiths. Ian, do what you have to and stop them coming.’_ And with the slightest movement of tail Blaine signaled to attack and there was no more time to worry on it. They surged forward as one, the brilliant blue of the Merlin’s flame roaring over their heads. Blaine leaped atop one of the not-wolves and tore out its throat. What sprayed from it was not blood but smoke, inky and black as it spread across the floor and the creature melted from existence as If it had never been. Adam reached his target a moment later, taking cue from his Alpha and aiming for the throat. His adversary twisted just enough to avoid giving Adam a killing grip, spinning with such speed Adam had little time to prepare as it lunged for him.

~*~

Lead lined cuffs had always been a particular favorite of Michael’s sire when it came to punishments but they were only ever reserved for the gravest of offenses. In that way Michael Chang Sr. had always proved that he was in fact a man of more mercy than their kind was usually credited for. The cuffs were cold against his skin and itchy where they pressed into his wrists in threat. Wearing them was an exercise in the utmost control as one had to keep themselves still and avoid cutting themselves on their sharp edges to avoid being poisoned. It was a nearly impossible task because the lead sapped at the strength and the itch grew over time, becoming unbearable. It was a natural reaction to the poison of led, their bodies rejecting the touch of it in a biological push for self-preservation; but the more one tried to wriggle free of them the more they would chaff, and where the cold metal braised the skin the lead would leave painful, often illness inducing, welts and burns. It typically didn’t kill them – not so long as lead exposure to open wounds wasn’t unduly prolonged – but he’d seen others put down for days after a night spent in the cuffs.

A rivulet of sweat dripped off of Mike’s brow as he kneeled, knees to the stone floor and hands cuffed tightly behind his back. His body swayed dangerously with exhaustion, his strength draining from him as his senses spiked and the magical energies he never thought twice about otherwise scrambled chaotically inside of him. He caught himself with an aborted motion and a quick shake of his head. He reminded himself that this punishment, terrible as it felt, was kinder than he deserved for the shame he’d brought to the coven. It was only an hour or so until dinner. Father could have waited to punish him at home. Could have had him strapped to the table in the hall and cut precisely and bled until he was gray and left to the mercy of his brethren. Given his trespass Mike doubted any one of them would have dared to offer him their blood in forgiveness. His mother possibly, though she had never openly defied his father to Michaels knowledge and his standing in the coven would have been so low he would probably have wished himself dead; suckling at his mother’s wrist like a sickly fledgling while his coven looked on in contempt.

This was indeed mercy, but it felt like hell. The itch was a fire already. He clenched and unclenched his fingers doing his best to resist the urge to twist and pull against the constricting metal focusing instead on anything that would keep his mind off it.

His mother had finished dressing for dinner and was stood beside the window, one hand parting the curtains and staring out. Her body angled towards Mike was the only give away that she remembered he was in the room at all. His father sat in an arm chair across from Mike, head turned towards his Bride as sat there deep in thought.

Mike clenched and unclenched his hands again and he must have pulled unconsciously because suddenly the itchy burn flared into a bright stinging jab of pain and he gasped with an open mouthed cry that he quickly stifled to a hiss.  He was so focused on the pain in his arms that he did not notice either the flare of light outside the window or the alarming crack – like the startling pop of a firework – that sounded almost immediately after until his father stiffened and stood slowly in his chair, something close to dread in his expression as a faint eerie wail crept in from outside.

“It begins now?” his father asked, the closest thing to uncertain as Mike had ever heard him. He blinked sweat from his swimming eyes and watched as his mother turned from the window, letting the curtains fall closed.

“There is a _portim_ hole opening on the grounds. They will expect us to report for instruction,” she intoned quietly as she crossed the room and (to Michael’s eternal gratefulness) unlocked the cuffs with the silver key handing around her neck.

Once the hateful things had been cast aside Michael fell forward onto his hands and retched. His mother’s hand gently stroked his sweaty hair back from his brow.

“If we join the fight here and Aurel fails in his endeavors we will face the wrath of the Guild,” his father stated bitterly and mother nodded minutely.

“Better to go through the _portim_ and help on that end,” she agreed. “If the battle should take an ill tide there will be fewer witnesses to eliminate. 

Mike was not certain any longer what they were discussing but he did not care. He knew what that signal wail meant and did not need the wind carrying the scent of blood to tell him that the truce was over and battle had begun in earnest. It meant that Tina was no longer safe here and that was his only concern.

Determined Mike staggered to his feet.

“Where is it that you think you’re going Michael?” His father’s voice was cool as Mike limped his way to toward the door of their rooms on tired legs.

“I need to get Tina,” he snapped over his shoulder, not bothering to stop.

“You have a duty to your family!” his sire hissed and that made Mike stop, just for a moment, right in his tracks because he was overwhelmed with the surge of anger and hate that he felt for the both of them just then- the pair of hypocrites!

“I have a duty to her!” He shouted. “She’s mine! She wears _my_ collar and will one day be _my_ Bride! I know you, Father, and Mother is the only real thing you’ve ever loved or given a scrap of real loyalty to, so do not speak to me of my duty to anything else when I know you would do the same!”

His father stood in a swirl of black tuxedo tails and gleaming fangs and Mike tensed; but Julia laid her hand on her Groom’s arm and his Sire went still beneath her hand. Mike heard her say softly, “Perhaps it is best. The girl is important to Anderson’s mate. Her rescue may prove useful.”

He did not wait to hear the verdict, gritting his teeth and striding away. When Mike slammed the door on his departure it rattled the hinges.

~*~

Chandler Khiel had always taken great pride in being one of the fastest shifters in the pack. What could take some of his classmates minutes could take him seconds if he really pushed himself, his body undergoing change almost as quickly as a vampire could phase from one place to another.

He was facing the door to Aurel’s room when it happened, knew better than to ever turn his back, and even when he began to feel the first inkling of alarm across the pack bond – the first hint of something wrong _wrong_ dreadfully wrong – he did not let it draw his eyes away. And then the call came and fear flooded his mouth even as the wolf stood to attention. Then came the command – _To Me_ – in Kurt’s voice, but before he could respond the door he was facing swung open and a being so fast they were nothing more than a blur of motion rushed toward him.

He didn’t have time to scream for the help that was stationed just at the other end of the hall as Aurel materialized before him and something sharp dug into his abdomen and tugged violently. The pain for all of its suddenness was surprisingly muted. So much so that Chandler was befuddled by his body’s poor response as he tried to move away from the vision of Aurel looming over him and failed. The vampire leaned forward, close enough to bestow a kiss and that sharp tugging sensation in his bowls began again in earnest. He looked down to see the vampire had plunged one pale fist through skin and muscle and was pulling the rest of it out with the kind of lazy enjoyment better suited for dipping one’s feet in a stream on a warm day, or stirring a cool drink.

Maybe watching someone literally tear out his guts clued his brain into the fact that it was in a lot of pain because it went from mute to dull roar in about a split second. Chandler opened his mouth to scream but the sound was garbled by the blood filling his mouth. Aurel grinned, leaning closer to lick the edge of his mouth where it spilled past his lips and Chandler’s whole body spasmed as if in disgust – though to be fair, it probably had more to do with the last forceful tug as Aurel yanked his hand free in a spray of red.

The teen crumpled to the floor unconscious of the sound of running feet as the other guard came rushing – too late – only to be met by Aurel and more of his men as they came pouring from the room.

Chandler was left to die, surrounded in a pool of his own blood. He had always had the romantic thought that should he die in battle his last thought would be of Adam.

Perhaps thankfully, it was nothing of the sort.

~*~*~

 

Jeff had nearly led Tina to where Kurt waited in the Alpha’s room when the call sounded.

_To me!_

The command shot through Jeff like the bolt of an arrow and he stumbled, nearly knocked over by the power of it. For a moment he wasn’t sure if it had been Kurt or Blaine’s voice splintering his head open but he had been taught better than to question the fierce tug that followed it. He was to go to Kurt. Jeff turned to order the Chang woman back to her rooms and had barely enough time to raise an arm in defense as a heavy object swung at his head.

In his moment of distraction Tina had picked up a decorative statuette from the table underneath a hall mirror and swung it at his head. Jeff blocked the blow just in time but the force behind it sent pain splintering up his arm as the bone shattered. He stumbled and bit back a shout of pain, tasting blood in his mouth as he bit into his tongue.

 _‘Jeff!’_ Under the ground, still locked within the safe house Nick howled. Jeff relied on every last ounce of his training to push away the distraction of pain and Nik’s fear to dodge the second blow the thrall aimed at him and tackle her with a growl. Being in thrall meant that she was somewhat stronger and faster than she would have been on her own but she was still no match for a lycan.

They crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs and Jeff saw stars as his injured arm was jolted.

 _‘Watch out!’_ Nik’s warning came just in time for Jeff to roll, blindly hoping it was the right action. It was the right instinct because he narrowly avoided the attack of a dark haired vampire woman, her nails swiping through the air where his head had been only a moment before. Given what he knew of vampire strength and swiftness that blow probably would have taken his head right off. As it was he had little time to recover. Tina scrambled to her feet and bolted toward the Alpha’s rooms even as the vampiress leapt atop him with a vicious hiss, reaching for his head with fangs glistening wetly. It was everything Jeff could do to hold her at bay, the pain in his arm intensifying with the strain.

Though it was true that lycans healed quickly he wasn’t healing quick enough. He could feel his arm going numb, buckling beneath the pressure of his attacker, her face inching closer and closer to his exposed throat. He had one moment of terror, a single moment to experience extreme sorrow as he did his best to withdraw from Nik so that the other alpha was not forced to relive the killing blow. His strength had nearly given way when something collided with his attacker, knocking the hissing vampire woman into the wall with a painful thud.

Two wolves, a grey and a brown coat, were engaged in a fierce battle with the vampiress.  Though Jeff did not immediately recognize them on sight he recognized them as mated by their scent and the seamless way they fought together. Their combined strength along with the element of surprise assured that the battle was quick.

Jeff shifted to the sounds of their enemy’s screams giving way to tearing flesh and crushing bone. The pain of shifting with broken bones was enough to tear another cry past his lips but it was over once the last muscle stretched and the last hair was in place. For perhaps too long of a moment he simply lay on his side, panting for breath and shivering with the remembered agony a lingering ache in his bones.

He didn’t move until a warm muzzle prodded him in the side. He opened his eyes to find the brown coat standing over him, his front stained red with blood. His skin was undoubtedly red and enflamed where the vampire’s blood had seeped through the fur. Male, alpha, guard wolf, suffering burns from vampire blood. The wolf lowered his head to push at him again.

_‘You alright Sterling?’_

_‘I’m fine. Thanks for the save…?’_

_‘Richard.’_

Jeff managed some approximation of a nod in Richard’s direction as he got to his feet. He looked to where the mangled form of the vampire woman lay. Beside her lay the grey coat – omega female – her face and muzzle covered in blood. She was writhing in agony, a sick gurgling sound emitting from her throat as she hacked and coughed.  As her peril increased Richard rushed to her side with a whimper and that was when Jeff learned that her name was Caroline. She must have been one of the house omegas if she hadn’t been hidden away in the safe house or down in the caves. She would have stayed to do her duty, which was to serve that damned conclave and then to defend the house in an event just such as this. But she wasn’t a guard and therefor had no real business fighting vampires. She either hadn’t known how poisonous there blood was to lycans or just hadn’t been experienced enough to resist swallowing while making a kill.

By the sounds of agony she was making Jeff knew there was no saving her, and despite every instinct to the contrary he knew there wasn’t any time to aide her either.

Aurel and his people were attacking in full force.

‘Richard! Richard _we have to go.’_ Jeff attempted to pull the other wolf from his fallen mate and received a violent snap of teeth and elongated snarl for his troubles. He had to jump backward to avoid the other alpha’s teeth but he persisted.

_‘There’s nothing you can do. I’m sorry… really I am but we’re guard! We still have a duty.’_

It was an undeniable fact, brought to them by the scent of death and the clamor of battle as the din rose throughout the house and grounds, but in the face of death they both needed the reminder.

But it would stay with Jeff forever that firsthand encounter with the dead men walking. He had known David, but he had not been there to watch the light leave his eyes but her was there to watch it leave Richard’s. As everything he held dear in the world left him Richard stood woodenly, pulled by the demands of a warrior’s duty, as if he had died but his body continued on, intent on a task unfinished.

He looked at Jeff with eyes that looked right through him, searching for something that wasn’t there and would never be there again.

It was not right.

~*~

 

When Ian had cast the spell that released the wraiths Kurt almost didn’t hear the ruckus that started up outside his window, so focused was he on the goings on in the study. When the sound did register he’d rushed to the window to investigate and the sight that had met him chilled to the bone. As far as he could see, and likely all over the house grounds, the vampires that had been camped outside under guard were rushing at the walls. They were being intercepted by members of the guard, resulting in a furious melee, but the attack had clearly taken the guard by surprise and they were being brutally killed left and right. In the distance he could hear the sounds of howls and screams, the vampires not content to focus their attack on the house but spreading into the forest to ferret out the rest of the pack.

It was hard not to get lost in the horror of it, the sudden swell of pain and fury. They had to stop them. Protect their people.

Together he and Blaine sent out the call to arms. Kurt’s throat muscles ached around the inhuman sound but he was filled with a fierce feeling of vindication as all around him the air began to fill with the sound of answering howls. Kurt turned from the window and shed his clothing wordlessly, eyes trained on the door. His chest was tight, racing heart betraying his fear but there was no hesitation within him, not with the wolf’s certainty that attack was the only way. Shifting had never come as easily to him as it did then and he waited, silent and still for the inevitable attack, crouched on all fours. Blaine and the others were tangled up too far away to be of any immediate aide, but Blaine was also there with him too, present in all but the physical and even that was a near thing.

He heard the sound of feet running toward the door and he tensed, breath quickening. His nose told him it was Tina. His instinct said one thing and his heart another.

 _‘She may not be herself’._ Blaine reminded him.

She hit the door with a thump, rattling the knob with fearful panic as she called his name.

“Kurt! Kurt please let me in. Kurt it’s me!”

 _‘Is it really?’_ He wondered. The choice, whatever it had been before, was taken away when he scented the sudden appearance of another followed by the scent of blood as Tina hit the door again with a rattling thud.

He was shifting before her scream finished ringing in his ears. There was no protest from Blaine, just a grim understanding that no amount of self-preservation could prevent Kurt from acting as one of his oldest friends _(kindred)_ was attacked outside his door. As he raced for the door he closed his mind to everything but his task and the presence of his mate- Blaine’s power and undaunted belief coursing through him – as he attempted to perform a feat well beyond his ability or experience level; but not theirs. When they were together like this it was not impossible.

Kurt propelled his body to change even as his hand grasped the lock and turned, knowing that whatever danger he was inviting inside would not give him much time to defend himself.

He was right. As soon as he’d released the lock the door was slammed inward and he was sent skidding backward. His paws hit the floor and he continued to skid with a scrape of nails as he fought to maintain his balance.

Just beyond doorway stood a familiar vampire male. He was tall and pale with deep brown hair. He had been introduced during the receiving progression as Alistar. He was grinning at Kurt now, his eyes a bloody red and his expensive attire bloodied with it all the way down to his coattails.

“What have we here? Your itty bitty Alpha could not have left you all alone could he?” Alistar made a tsking sound in derision but he made no move to advance into the room. Holy water, Kurt remembered but he could not take advantage of its protection with Tina at the vampire’s feet. Before Alistar could decide to use her as a weapon Kurt took the initiative and charged.

He rushed for the feet, springing up off his hind legs at the last moment at the arm that came down in a defensive swipe. He bit down but did not savage the limb with his teeth Blaine’s warning about the poison of vampire blood heavy in his mind. It was enough to pull Alistar off balance and he fell. Kurt was on top of him a moment later with all the speed he could muster, tearing at the open flesh of face and throat with an emphasis on nail rather than tooth. He yelped in pain as with a burst of strength Alistar twisted them over and raked his sharp nails across Kurt’s flank.

Restricted from using his teeth as often as he’d like made the vampire harder to kill, especially in light of its own speed and strength, but Kurt was relentless, thinking of Tina and all that they stood to lose if he lost this fight.

They rolled across the floor twisting and grappling for the other as cuts opened up and their bodies began to weaken from blood loss. Kurt began to worry as he felt his own stamina begin to wane. Increasingly desperate to end the struggle Kurt took greater risks. When the opportunity presented he lunged for the exposed skin of the vampire’s shoulder and bit down with all his strength.

Alistar screamed over the sound of crunching bone and Kurt let out a particularly sharp cry of pain as the vampire’s nails dug into his side like knives.

 _‘Don’t let go, Kurt! Don’t let go!’_ Blaine shouted inside his head and any thought Kurt had about disobeying fled his mind. It was clear that they were too evenly matched to risk letting go of any advantage and Kurt did not think he would get another chance to end this. Still, it was nearly impossible as Alistar dug at his flesh with uncompromising speed and force, desperate to get out from under the lycan’s bulk, but Kurt held on tight, bearing down and ripping muscle and bone with each shake of his head. He felt it the instant that Alistar faltered beneath the pain of his assault and the wolf snarled with victory lunging for the vampire’s unprotected throat.

Just like that it was over. Alistar went limp beneath him, red eyes glazed with death, and Kurt let his body drop to the floor with a wet thud. There was so much blood everywhere and Blaine was buzzing in the recesses of his mind with warnings not to swallow. He let the majority of the blood leak from his mouth as he panted for breath, wiping his tongue as best he could on the cleanest patch of fur he could find. His entire body was smarting with pain but he stayed upright despite the trembling in his legs. He couldn’t rest now. Their people still needed him, Carole and Finn were alone in their room, and there were students in the house whose families would not take it well if anything were to happen to them on Blaine’s watch. Blaine needed him.

_‘I’ve sent someone for your family. Get to Noelle and her party. She’s making her way toward you from the south wing.’_

The infirmary was in the south wing of the house. Kurt’s heart thudded in alarm as he thought of Quinn and the children cornered there.

 _‘Tell her get to them first. I’m on my way,’_ Kurt ordered. It was their job to protect the students and he’d never forgive himself if something happened to them just because Blaine was expending the guard trying to keep him safe. But Kurt wasn’t delusional. His injuries would slow him down and he could use someone at his back.

As he trotted over to Tina’s crumpled form outside the door he reached over the bond for Chandler, so used to his constant bubbling energy readily at hand that the shock of silence was like a cold slap.

‘ _Chandler? Where are you? I need-’_

He heard movement down hall and it tore him from his thoughts. He growled low, standing guard in front of Tina as the sound of running feet approached. A moment later one of the wraiths came hurtling around the corner as if thrown, crashing into the opposite wall. Kurt watched a blur of speed come charging after the stunned beast to grab it by the hind legs. Brittany (for it was her) swung the creature with the graceful turn of a dancer sending it careening back into the wall. It hit with a crunch this time and to Kurt’s relief it dissolved into thick black smoke that curled in on itself and slowly dissipated.

Brittany stood at the end of the hall, heaving for breath, her blond hair in wild disarray. Kurt could see that her clothes were torn in many places where the wraith had managed to strike her. She stared at the spot where the wraith had disappeared with a forlorn pout pulling at her mouth as she swayed. She sat down with alarming suddenness, her legs giving out beneath her, still struggling for breath and staring like someone forsaken at that spot on the wall.

“I am not a killer,” she pleaded to no one in particular. Then she turned that plea to him, hungry hope in her sad gaze as she asked, “do you think it counts if they are already dead?”

Kurt could not think of any answer that might be of comfort to her. Behind him Tina groaned and Kurt turned to appraise her. She smelled of blood and there was a dark bruise forming around a gash in her forehead. Kurt could not see any other visible injury but the smell of blood was alarmingly strong alongside an acrid smell that raised his hackles. It wreaked of dark magic, of vampire, and it put the wolf on edge.

“ _Tina, are you alright_?” he asked despite how clearly she wasn’t; but Tina wouldn’t answer him. As she blinked her eyes clear of blood and tears to get a good look at him the scent of her distress tripled and she began struggling backwards and away.

Kurt realized belatedly that she had never seen him in this form and had no reason not to fear a wolf covered in blood and began to shift back. Injured as he was it was probably better he heal anyway and he needed Tina to be able to listen to him and follow instructions that might keep her safe.

“It’s just me, see” Kurt said gently once he was on two legs again. Tina still said nothing, though she had stopped attempting to back through the wall. She was breathing frantically but did not shrink from the hand Kurt slowly extended toward her. She had two of her hands trying to dig under the metal collar clasped around her throat and the pitiful sounds she made as she tugged at it only to be met with unyielding resistance broke his heart.

The collar was a mark of her thralldom, a sign of her ownership by masters who had proved themselves cruel, and the very sight of it filled him with a level of unprecedented disgust. He growled in threat and she flinched back from him, leaving a sick feeling of guilt churning in his gut.

 _‘Kurt, be careful.’_ Not a scold but a plea from Blaine. They both knew there was no leaving her like this. Chained to these monsters and struggling desperately for freedom. She was kindred.

_‘The perfect tool.’_

God help them both, but it was true.

“Let me help you,” Kurt entreated ever gentle and Tina’s hands slowly withdrew, dropping into her lap. She turned her head to bare her throat and stared off into the distance, still shivering with fear despite her acquiescence. The desperation permuting her was so strong it was sour in his nose.

He knew next to nothing about vampire collars other than their primary function as Blaine had explained it so he hadn’t known quite what to expect in removing one. It was certainly not for the warm feel of it beneath the palm of his hands, nor how easily the clasp gave. The metal was pleasantly heated as if it had been left too close to a fire and the hinge in the back gave way with the softest bit of pressure from his hands. When he lifted it from around her throat it left not so much as a mark behind to show where it had once rested.

“Kurt?” Tina’s voice sounded small and frightened but it was there and she was finally looking at him like she knew him. Casting the hateful ornament aside Kurt pulled his friend into a fierce hug.  He would never let her go again.

“We need to keep moving,” he announced, and not just for her benefit. They’d wasted too much time as it was and there was no telling when someone or something else would break through whatever line of defense was protecting the Alpha’s wing. Though he was loath to he forced himself to let go of his friend and looked back to find Brittany. She was still sitting where he’d last seen her staring solemnly at her hands.

“Brittany?” he waited, and eventually she did look up at him albeit slowly. Gently he asked, “Can you carry her? She’s injured and I can’t guard and carry at the same time.”

Brittany’s solemn expression was slowly melting into one of confusion and then rapidly into fright. It immediately put Kurt on guard, warning bells going off in his mind.

“No don’t!” Brittany shouted, a hand going forward as if to reach for him and too late Kurt realized that she wasn’t looking at him but at Tina.

He whipped his head around to confront the danger head on but it was already too late. He felt something warm thrust roughly against his skin and it was followed by an all too final sounding click. It took him a slight second to piece together what had occurred because there was no pain and Tina’s hands fell away and she made no move whatsoever either to defend herself or attack him further.

His wolf realized the truth before he did because suddenly he was awash with panic. The constricted feeling around his neck enough to send him clawing and scratching at it, keenly aware of how trapped he was. While his focus had been on Brittany Tina had reached for her collar and the heavy metal was now clasped snuggly around his throat. He couldn’t shift like this. He was vulnerable and weak with vampire magic thick in his nose. He couldn’t quite breathe. Everything was spinning, a bright light growing in the middle of the room.

The light got so bright it gave him a blinding headache. He shut his eyes but it didn’t make the spinning stop, if anything it got worse. Overcome with vertigo Kurt felt consciousness beginning to slip away from him.

“Kurt!”

Tina. Brittany. Blaine. It sounded like all of them and none of them at once. He opened his mouth to call back but there wasn’t any use, he was already falling into darkness.

~*~*~*~

CRACK!

Calvin winced as a thin black crack appeared in the dark wood of the infirmary doors. He’d been half asleep when the howls had jolted him awake. It had woken the other patients there as well, the younger kids beginning to whimper and whine with fear as all around the forest howls went up into the air and the distant sound of fighting began to drift through window and walls.

Quinn and the omega nurses had rallied them all together and they’d done what they could to block the doors with whatever was heavy and not bolted to the ground. Those who could walk carried those who could not walk for themselves as far from the doors as they could but there wasn’t anything they could do without leaving the room. Quinn said that the Alpha had ordered them to stay put, that it was safer within the walls of the house than without but when the pounding and scratching at the door had come Calvin knew it had been a mistake to stay.

They were cornered in here, and even though he’d heard the sounds of the guard arriving to defend them the pounding at the door had not ceased. And now there was a crack.

Screams broke out as there was another loud bang against the door and the crack in the shuddering wood began to splinter. The smell of blood, lycan and vampire alike, began to seep into the room and the terror squirming in Calvin’s belly only increased.

“Everybody get back!” Quin shouted above the screams, ushering the crowd back further against the wall. She was holding her daughter Beth tightly in her arms, a white knuckled grip that Calvin thought looked painful.

“ _That door isn’t going to hold,”_ Quinn’s assistant Rajeesh barked in thought. He and a few of the other nurses had already shifted, beginning to form a line in front of Quinn and the infirmary patients. He stood stiff legged and tall, the hair of his brownish red coat standing up on end, his ears erect with aggression, ready to defend them all till his last breath.

Calvin had the thought that Rajeesh and the other infirmary omegas did not have among them enough teeth to defend them from the threat clearly overwhelming the guard and breaking down their door. They weren’t going to fight their way out of this not with a room full of scared pups. They would have been better off to run, but now there was no way out but…

“Quinn! Quinn the window!” Calvin tugged on the human doctor’s shirt and gestured toward the row of shuttered windows at their back. Blaine had had the house omegas reinforce them in preparation of today’s worst but it would be a simple enough thing to tear off the wooden planks from the inside.

Quinn looked to where he pointed. Calvin watched as in a split moment a million unvoiced thoughts raced through her mind before she nodded sharply, handed one of the nurses her daughter and beckoned him to follow her. They rushed for the nearest window and together began to pry at the boards that braced them shut. A boy named Tom, a fellow Beta level student, came over to help and between the three of them the managed to pry one board free and then another.

Calvin reached for the third but Quinn grabbed him by the back of the neck and shook her head even as her hand splayed and pushed him forward.

“It’s big enough,” she explained as she hastily removed her shirt and began wrapping it around her hand. Calvin ducked as she picked up one of the boards and swung at the open portion of glass with a heave, shattering it with a single blow. She quickly abandoned the board to punch out the lingering shards with her wrapped hand. The hole was big enough for her to fit her shoulders through. She leaned her head out to take a hurried look around. Even so it was not a very big space and he had to wonder how they were all going to get out of there before the vampires broke the door down.

Even as he thought it there was another violent thud against the door and the sound of splintering wood behind them.

“Hurry!” Quinn hissed, frantic, as she grabbed him by the hips and began to hoist him through the window. Calvin didn’t wait to be asked twice, scrambling for purchase and wiggling with the best of his ability as broken shards cut into his hands and sides. Then, he was through falling out the ground floor window onto the cobbled walk below with a jarring thud. But he was outside, and it would only a short leap over the forest floor below.  Even the younger pups shouldn’t have too much trouble with it.

It was quieter on this side of the house what with the infirmary facing the lake. They could escape into the wood, go around the lake and make their way back into the caves.

Calvin got to his feet, ignoring the ache in his knees and palms to help Quinn with the others. The first through was Beth who put up a kicking and screaming fuss when she was separated from her mother but quieted quickly with Quinn’s desperate please and assurances that all would be well. Calvin pulled her through and made to put her down, expecting there to be others, and nearly dropped her in shock at Quinn’s sharply barked, “No! No Calvin, go!”

“But-?”

“Go!” she barked again. “Go right now. I’ll get the others. Just go!”

He understood in that moment that she was lying to him. That she did not think there would be time at all to help any of the others and that she had done what she could to help the two of them.  Beth because she was a mother, and Calvin because she owed Blaine her life and Calvin was the son of a pack Alpha.

It was in that moment that Calvin finally understood all that he had missed, caught up as he had been in his hunger for the world he’d yet to discover and resentment of the walls that had caged him in since his birth. This was home. The people still trapped within that room were _his_ and he did not wish to be different or special in some way that should mean that he lived while they died. He wanted to stay and face the same fate that they did; but Quinn was begging for him to go and he was holding her daughter. Beth was small in his arms, shaking like a leaf, whimpering for her mother. To be brave in the way that he thought he should be he’d have to hand her back, have to take away her only real chance at survival.

Making a decision in that split moment Calvin thrust out a hand and demanded that Quinn hand him her keys. Her eyes narrowed in confusion even as her mouth hardened in an angry line but Calvin did not have time to explain or to beg.

“Give me the keys or I swear I will stay right here! I am not leaving without them!”

As he’d thought, fear for her daughter’s life trumped any concern or suspicion the human woman might have had because a moment later she was thrusting the keys she kept on a chain at her belt toward him and Calvin snatched them from her hand before she could change her mind. Then clamping a hand over Beth’s mouth he turned tail and ran, Beth’s muffled cries trailing behind him. They wouldn’t give up he promised her. They would never give up their home without a fight.

~*~*~*~

Tina slumped back against the wall, eyes glued to the spot where Kurt had been only moments before he’d been swallowed by a bright light and disappeared in front of her very eyes. A sob caught in her throat and she shuddered, pain lancing through her lower half. There was something warm and wet seeping through her clothing, and she should really be more concerned about that but she found herself too heartbroken to do anything more than sit there feeling miserable. For the first time since James had cornered her at the dinner party she was free to do and feel exactly as she wished and what Tina Cohen Chang felt like doing was dying.

She’d betrayed her very best friend in the world and now he was gone.

“Tina!” Brittany cried as she rushed to her side. There was someone else with her. Familiar hands. Gentle touch. Mike. He wrapped her up in warm arms, cradling her to his chest as her body shook with shock and her eyes drifted closed. She wanted to sleep and never wake up.

“What did you do?!” She thought it was Brittany who was shouting but her voice sounded strange, thick and echoing in Tina’s ears. Mike hissed, pulling her closer to him and the movement jostled her sore limbs. She didn’t make a sound. She deserved the pain after what she’d done.

“No, lovely shush.” Mike smoothed back bangs soaked with blood and sweat and pressed a kiss to the mess of her brow. “Someone turned her collar into a _portim –_ a gateway – he’ll be alive, just not here,” he explained to Brittany who was looming over them both with nails extended. There was something strange happening to her eyes (not just her voice). They had dilated till her pupils were so tiny they were nearly pinpricks and they were glowing a hot amber.

“Where did she send him? Tell me!” Brittany demanded in that same thick resonating voice. Tina didn’t have the energy to flinch. She was too cold to do much more than shiver.

“I don’t know, Blaine!”  She heard Mike thunder. “Tina is dying! I am getting her help and if you want to stop me you’re going to have to kill us both and use Brittany to do it. Are you really that kind of a man?”

Tina didn’t know what happened after that. The darkness that had been encroaching at the edge of her vision finally found her.

~*~*~*~

She was too quick for Mike who was still trying to hold onto Tina. In seconds she was behind him, hand gripping the black strands of his hair tightly as she pulled his head back to bare his throat.

“All of you died the minute you touched him,” she heard the Alpha say in her voice, with her mouth, and inside she screamed.

_‘Please… please…’_

When Brittany had been a girl kept in a cage, there had been a few opportunities to run. She’d taken each one but had never gotten further than the steps before her whole body went up in tingles and she was no longer alone in her head. Sire had a way of looking through her when he wanted, seeing the things that she saw and tasting the things that she tasted. He said it was because he was the master of this place and that everyone and everything in it had to obey him, including her.

Brittany wasn’t alone in her head right now either. Blaine was there and he was so terribly angry. His anger spread through her like fire in dry field, blackening everything it touched. Her will was paralyzed beneath it even as her body moved and words were ripped out of her raw throat.

He saw her coven brother and his chosen one through her eyes, but he did not see them as she did. He did not love them and he did not love her, though they were bonded by whatever measure of love she and his brother had once shared. Despite all that had come of it Brittany had never regretted that part of it: giving Sire her love.

A lost boy had come to her window and he had asked if there was anyone left at all in the world who could love him. And she had, with the ease of a child. In that moment Cooper Anderson had possessed the very thing he needed most and just because it hadn’t lasted didn’t make it worthless. She could take nothing of the past back, but even if she could she had never understood why Santana and Mike seemed to think she should try and take _that_.

She might not have gotten hurt… that was true. But someone else might have and whatever reminder she might have imparted to Cooper that there was still more to the world than blood and death would never have occurred. Neither outcome was desirable. So, she had reconciled with the part that fate had given her to play, not in Cooper Anderson’s making but in her own. Her name was Brittany S. Pierce and she had loved the wrong boy once. He had left a mark upon her but she had survived to leave her own.

And now Blaine Anderson was going to use what she had given once in childish ignorance as a weapon against what little family she had left. He was going to kill them for what they had done and then he would leave her to fall, broken and discarded as surely as if he had taken a blade and run her through.

Her name was Brittany S. Pierce and she was not the monster that had made her. She did not kill.

His name was Blaine and he was so very angry. He did not love her. He was not her friend.

He couldn’t use what she didn’t give him. It was enough. More than enough.

Brittany imagined that she could see it, the place in her heart that her Sire had made for himself and all the ties and tethers that still remained. They glowed warm and soft, comforting and kindred, but they were lies.

It was enough, enough, more than enough!

She grabbed at them with fury pulling at them with all of her might until they began to snap one by one, pain blooming in her chest where each had been as if she’d been sliced open. She kept pulling. She’d bleed to death right in the middle of the hall before she let someone else take her mind and her body and use her.

_Enough enough enough enough enough_

_“_ Enough!” The scream tore out of her throat like a thing with blades, cracking and raw, but the voice was solely hers. Her hands suddenly unclenched from around Michael’s throat and he fell forward with a gurgled gasp for breath even as her listless body slumped and fell to the floor.

Her head was splitting but she was alone in it at last. She smiled through the tremulous sob that swelled in her chest. She still thought she could feel the bond between her and the alpha – that thing that made them kindred – it would take something far stronger than she to destroy it completely, but it was weakened… pitiful. Brittany curled into herself, shivering at the stinging pain that still lingered in her chest.

He had not been her friend. It was something she’d had to accept to save someone who really was. And she had to get up now and help Mike get Tina far away from here where no one else could hurt her.

“Brittany?” Michael questioned, rising again with wariness as he watched her. “How did you…?”

“We are kindred, it’s supposed to mean family. He wasn’t being very nice.”

*~*~*

_Serpent Mounds, Ohio_

Suddenly awake Kurt shot up, desperate to confirm with his own eyes that his father was really there, only to crack his head on the low hanging ceiling of what was turning out to be a rather wide domed cage.

Sharp pain followed the motion and he hissed, falling back onto his ass in the dirt. The four people who had previously been sitting just a ways off watching through the bars of their prison rushed forward to assist him. Burt was the first to reach him and Kurt forgot all the pain in his skull as his father enveloped him in a fierce hug. His wide shoulders were shaking as he clutched Kurt to his chest, the pressure of his hold nearing on painful but Kurt couldn’t bring himself to mind. His father was finally there; warm and whole and nothing in the world could have pulled them apart at that moment.

But the world refused to be forgotten completely. Despite the warmth of his father’s arms there was a cold chill seeping into Kurt’s bones and the sound of a childlike whimper pulled his attention to the others, who had crowded close by and Kurt’s nose picked them up and recognized them a moment later.

“Lina!” He lurched in his father’s hold and Burt released him.

A moment later he’d grabbed the lycan female up in a crippling hug his whole body shaking with the force of his relief. When he’d discovered what she’d done he’d truly feared that he’d never see her again.

“What the hell were you thinking! Why did you…” he bit down on the rest of his sentence, swallowing the words because he already knew the answer to them. And he could see it there, in the misery of Lina’s gaze, that she understood the cost of her actions all too well. Tenderly his friend pushed the sweat damp strands of his hair away from his eyes and nodded beyond the bars of their cage, toward where a cluster of people were standing.

“So that he would follow me.”

Kurt did not have to ask who _he_ was. Though there were nearly ten people clustered around what looked like a stone table between two giant crosses- upon which hung two humans, pinned like moths to a wall, blood flowing freely from the wounds in their hands and feet- it was obvious to him which one was Cooper Anderson.

He was taller than Blaine and their facial features were only vaguely similar for sharing a father. It was the smell of him that confirmed it really, the unmistakable smell of kin – of _same –_ like he’d smelled on Benito that first time. Looking at Benito now with his frightened blue eyes it was unmistakable. They were all one screwed up family.

‘ _Blaine I-’_ Kurt halted mid thought realizing with blatant shock that he was thinking into a void. There was no one and nothing in his head but him and that seeping cold. Blaine was gone.

“Lina! Lina I can’t reach Blaine!” He could hear his rising panic, feel the tears welling up unbidden in his eyes as he continued to reach and reach and found nothing but aching empty cold.

“It’s that thing around your neck” the lycan male he didn’t know the name of said, nodding at the collar that Kurt had all but forgotten. “That’s got vampire voodoo stamped all over it.”

“How do we get it off?” Burt demanded to know, obviously upset with Kurt’s increasing distress. Kurt was digging at it, but despite how easily it had come off for him when Tina wore it, it refused to budge now for any of them.

“I d-don’t understand. I took it off her. Get it off me,” he pleaded, the low whine of the wolf’s distress behind his words. He did not want to fall apart but he wanted his mate and his mate was gone and it wasn’t right! He was scared.

“You were probably meant to, Kurt” Lina guessed sadly, looking out at their captors again. “And now… I think he is the only one who can.”

Kurt looked out through the bars to where Cooper Anderson was still standing amidst the crowd of vampires and shivered. He recognized Mike’s father right away but a quick glance at all their faces let him know that neither Mike nor Tina was among them. He did see the tall striking blond that Cooper was engaged in a heated conversation with and knew him on sight. It was Aurel and he did not look at all pleased with Blaine’s brother. His entire front was soaked in blood and Kurt’s stomach twisted to see it because it meant that someone he cared about – someone who belonged to him and Blaine – had likely died.

The realization, painful as it was helped him find the wherewithal to calm his breathing and try to clear his head. He would likely die here (and so would his father and the others) if he did not collect himself and come up with some sort of strategy. He couldn’t give up, and he couldn’t depend on miracles to save him no matter how fervently he found himself wishing for one.

“How long have I been here?” he asked because first thing first was always gather Intel.

“Five, ten minutes maybe,” Puck answered. “At first it was just the vryloka and the wizard. Then a _portim_ opened up and those other guys arrived. You appeared out of another one shortly after that.”

“They were going to strap you up to one of those things…” Burt’s voice was so small when he spoke that it took Kurt a moment to believe he’d heard him at all. He’d never heard his father sound that way before: a man so subdued and frightened that his voice threatened to fail him. But Kurt followed his gaze to the cross casting shadow over them and the lifeless form that hung from it like an insect pinned and had to close his eyes and swallow back more panic.

_Breathe, just breathe. You aren’t alone._

But with his head quiet of all voices but his own and the familiar hum and buzz of Blaine’s mind gone from his it felt like an empty promise.

“Why didn’t they?” he heard himself ask and Lina bent toward him, sliding one soft palm against the soft skin of his underarm in sweet comfort.

“I told him that you are my friend and begged him to stop. Benito began to cry and it upset him. James…” She flushed, ducked her head but continued, “Cooper. He decided to keep you here until they were ready. He told me that we should say our goodbyes. That is when he and the other began to argue…”

“Damn it! What is it they want, why are they doing this?!” Burt cursed violently, squeezing Kurt tighter as the omega woman’s voice broke and faded away.

A low growl rumbled in Puck’s chest but Kurt glared him down, disliking the threat of aggression in the sound and the way it was pointed at the clearly terrified omega.

“We can’t trust whatever _she_ says, she arrived with him. They’re lovers or something,” Puck bit out through clenched teeth, as if Kurt didn’t already know. Kurt ignored him and laid his hand over Lina’s.

“This isn’t goodbye Lina,” he assured her, assured himself. He forced himself to sit up, abandoning the embrace of his father’s arms and was immediately chilled, something deep inside aching now that he no longer had the anchor of that touch but he braced through it.

_Blaine. Where was Blaine? Gone. Wrong. That was so wrong…_

He shook his head clear of the debilitating thoughts and took another shuddering breath.

“Blaine and the others… they’ll come,” he said. God he hoped. He needed…

 _Blaine_.

“Kurt,” Lina clutched at him, mouth wobbling despite the effort to keep it together. “Portims transport you from place to place in the blink of an eye and they leave no trace. We’re miles from Westerville. Even if he could get here in time… Blaine doesn’t know where to look.”

“He h-has Ian. Creating another portal or whatever should be easy for the Merlin.” Kurt’s teeth rattled with the cold but he pressed on. “And h-he has me. We need to get this thing off.” He tapped the collar constricting his throat and the cold metal clinked, the sound somehow sharper than he’d have expected.

Puck and Burt shared a worried look between them. But slowly Lina’s puzzled expression began to brighten, tentative hope shining in her eyes.

“Yes. I see.”

“See what?” Burt demanded. “How will that help?”

“Kurt and Anderson are true mates,” Puck answered, beginning to catch on. “They have a way of finding each other but that collar is preventing it.”

“Okay, but how do we get it off?” Burt asked begrudgingly. He sounded as if he too was beginning to hope but was wary of the letdown if that hope proved to be false. “I doubt those assholes are gonna do it just because we ask nice.”

He had a point. They’d all tried, and it was likely Cooper was the only one who could remove the damn thing. Kurt ignored the sinking of his own hopes to attack the problem at hand from every angle. There had to be some way.

_Ask nicely._

The thought came to him suddenly and he stilled, mulling the blooming idea over in his head. The others reacted to his sudden stillness withheld breath and silent stares until Lina bravely squeezed his arm and murmured his name in inquiry.

“He might, if you were the one to ask him.”

Lina stared at him incredulously, the confusion in her eyes flashing to hurt as she looked away from him.

“You think I have not begged him to stop this madness? I have no more influence over him than-” Kurt called her name and grabbed both her hands and Lina stopped mid-sentence with a violent shudder.

“Lina, listen!” he insisted. “He found you even though you were a world away, he found you even with the charm that Ian gave you, and I’m here instead of out there because _you_ needed the chance to say goodbye.”

“Do you think any of that makes me proud! That I wanted any of it?!”

“I think it means that whatever else is true about him, somewhere in there Cooper Anderson really loves you!” Kurt insisted in a fierce whisper and Lina flinched away from him. He tightened his grip on her wrists. He knew it would hurt her to hear what he was going to say and that doing what he was about to ask her to do would not only be dangerous but painful, but it was their best chance; their only chance.

“You love him too. I know you do, and I know that’s not easy for you. I know it would be easier if the love would just stop or dry up, but you know it won’t. You’re true mates.”

Lina went suddenly still, like a deer caught in headlights, and it seemed as if the entire group collectively held their breath. Benito whined, wiggling between the gap in their arms until Kurt let go of his mother’s arms. Lina quickly wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close. As she buried her face into his dark curls Benito growled at him, blue eyes glaring. Kurt smiled, soft and sad, his heart aching at the sight. He felt like the worst sort of person for what he was about to do and was glad that at least one of them had the thought to protect her.

“It does not change what he is,” Lina croaked. “He will never stop unless he is dead.”

“Yes,” Kurt agreed and slowly she looked up at him, her eyes searching his. She saw what he had already seen. Though his insides burned with guilt he did not do her the disservice of looking away. He was asking her to risk her life for all of theirs – for his – while she was holding everything she had to lose.

“If our bond is as true as you think… I may be able to influence him for a moment, maybe two. Long enough to do what you need, but neither he nor his coven will be kind in their retaliation.”

Gently Kurt reached for her, grasping the soft flesh of her cheeks as he lowered his brow to hers. He could feel the trickle of tears that slid down her face and knew that they mirrored his own.

 _‘I know that too.’_ The confession stung so deeply he could not bear to speak it aloud. The world had fallen away to just them. The sound of Lina’s breath and the sound of her racing heart filling his ear drums and the bright shining blue of her eyes as her gaze held his. _‘I don’t know what else to do.’_

The sob came unbidden, getting choked up in his throat and only further muffled as Lina threw her arms about him and held him tight, shushing his cries like a mother would a fretful child. It was stupidly unfair. He was the one asking her to put her life at risk. He was the one selfish enough to use her because he had been stupid enough to fall into an obvious trap, because he hadn’t been the type of leader willing to sacrifice one of his friends to see to the greater good… and yet here he was, asking this of the woman who’d been the truest of friends when he’d needed it most. What kind of a person was he?

 _‘Shhh. It is as you said, our best chance, and we must take it.’_ Her gentle thought soothed him, and it was not so much the words but the feeling of acceptance emanating from her that began to calm the storm within him. She was a slow tide, a slower breath, as she wiped the tears from his cheeks, determination settling about her shoulders. _‘No more tears now. Whatever should happen, Kurt, you must promise me no harm will come to my son. Please…’_

_‘I will do everything I can to protect him. And you. I won’t let anything-’_

_‘I do not need you to make me a promise you can’t keep. I could not bear to hear it right now when I need your word on what matters to me more than my own life. Say that he will be loved, that he will not grow up in fear and the shadow of death as I did. Swear this to me!’_

_‘I swear.’_

It was not a lie, as the other promise would have been. Kurt could easily swear that whether he and Blaine had a thousand cubs Benito would always be loved. He clutched Lina tightly by the waist as slowly she nuzzled her cheek against his. The friction of their skin created a familiar warmth, slow and easy as it trickled through their bodies, sweet with the scent of kin and kindred.

As Kurt’s nose filled with the scents of home the constricted feeling in his chest finally began to ease. The chill in his bone showing the first signs of abating at the first touch of mângâiere he’d had since he’d been collared. It was such a relief that he felt the prick of tears again, because in his heart he knew he did not deserve it. Lina must have heard his anguish because she continued to nuzzle him, both of them feeling the ache for their purest form but making do with the dulled senses of their two legged ones.

Lightly, she pressed a kiss just on the edge of his jaw and bowed her head in submission.

_“For pack and for thee, my Matcă”_

~*~*~

CRACK

Blaine felt the blow, and the stinging pain that resulted but the pain was muted, as if he was only observing it from the outside looking in. What he felt so keenly it was like an open wound in his chest was the loss of his mate. It was cold without Kurt, silent and empty in a way he hadn’t felt since bonding with him. There one instant and gone the next, as if he’d simply blinked out of existence. If Blaine had not seen it for himself that Kurt had been transported he would have thought him dead and gone mad with grief. As it was it had been a near thing.

What he’d done to Brittany… Santana had every right to slap him, though he was thankful for the presence of the others now as they wrestled her away from him. There wasn’t time either to deal with her anger or his own failings. All of it could be dealt with after they’d dealt with their enemy and got Kurt back.

“You fucking bastard!” Santana was hollering at him as she tried to fight her way out of the hold Rachel and Adam had on her. “How could you do that to her?!”

Blaine blinked the sweat from his eyes and shook his head to clear it of the fog of panic and loss. A quick glance around revealed the study as he’d last seen it: ruined, no evidence of the wraiths besides their own blood and the body on the desk, now little more than a blackened husk. The only way for Ian to stop the wraiths had been to destroy their gateway.

_Poor bastard._

Blaine gritted his teeth and pushed every thought away but the ones he needed. If he didn’t focus he’d fail, and he couldn’t afford to fail his people any more than he already had.

He turned that focus back on the others taking quick stock of numbers and injuries. The hem of Ian’s robes were soaked in blood and for the first time that Blaine could remember he looked wan. Whatever counter magic he had used to destroy Sam Evans had taken a toll. The others were on their two legs, bodies outwardly healed from their injuries but there was no telling with magical foes and they all looked exhausted enough to drop. There was a particularly hollow look in Adams eyes that Blaine recognized all too well, remembered from the days of watching David stare into voids as the shock of bond loss consumed him. The Pack was bleeding, crying out in one loud clamorous voice in Blaine’s head that it was nearly impossible to feel each and every separate loss – but he was Alpha, and he had recognized it just the same when one of those voices had been Chandler’s. The same way he knew that even now amongst the lives that were blinking out in the infirmary there was one that had been waning long before the onset of battle and was only waning all the more.

So many casualties already and still, Wes and Adam stood at the ready. Waiting for his instruction. Waiting for their Alpha to tell them their next steps as if they would never suffer for it.

Blaine looked to Ian and the wizard met his gaze, knowing and nodding slowly in acceptance. Now was the time. Blaine took a breath and reached inside, the way Ian had painstakingly taught him as a boy, the way he’d avoided since the night he’d fought his father for the right of Alpha, the way he hated.

He was not a prolific magic user by any means, but it was there, locked in his blood for this use and it answered to his call like a swelling wave. It was hot, boiling in his center like a mini sun, coursing through his veins like boiled water but he ignored the pain and the innate knowledge that it was his own life he was burning for fuel.

The ground trembled as he strode forward. Blaine motioned and the two men dropped Santana who stumbled at the sudden lack of support and flinched away from him as he bore down on her. He didn’t know what he looked like to her, though he had memories of his father like this – the unbearable force of his voice and the beauty of him – so he was careful as he grabbed her by the chin, not to force her to look but to hold her still while he made his demands.

“I owe her for my crime, I admit that; but right now I need your heart.” Santana’s eyes narrowed hatefully and Blaine’s mouth tightened. “I will not take it from you, Santana, but if you do not give it willingly to me and to this land, you will not be protected. When this is over I will not hold you to oaths made under duress.”

A single bitter tear slipped down her cheek before she nodded, dropping her head and hissing through gritted teeth.

“For Pack, for Alpha.”

Relief trickling through him Blaine dropped her chin as around the trembling of the floors increased.

“Follow me,” he commanded, already striding for the study doors. He did not need to look back to see the others fall into line.

~*~*~*~

The wind was groaning through the trees as Calvin ran along the lake towards the safe house, little more than a streak of red fur darting about in the moonlight. He had left Beth in the care of the first family he’d come across in the caves, they’d tried to get him to stay but he’d slipped out of the alpha’s hands and run back into the trees before they could stop him, Beth’s cries echoing at his back. The ground had started to shake as he made his way back, the minute tremble in the earth followed by a faint drumming sound that reminded him first of the march of soldiers and he’d had a panicked moment where he thought the vampires had already made it this far and were on their way to the caves to murder the families that Blaine had hidden there.

It wasn’t vampires though, but the earth itself, rattling beneath his feet like a snake about to strike and apparently just as poisonous.  He let out a sharp squeal, nearly dropping the key ring clamped between his teeth, when a black clothed figure came crashing out of the trees toward him. It was a pale skinned vampire, hissing and spitting like a rabid cat, a foul stench permuting from it as it stumbled and jerked its way toward him on unsteady feat.

As Calvin scampered away from it he saw why: the feet of the creature were tangled up in roots and vines along the forest floor, and where the earth had touched him his skin had molted with lurid burns. There was a sickening snap as the bones in his ankles broke and Calvin squealed again as the vampire crashed to the forest floor only a few inches from him. The ghastly thing reached toward him with wicked nails coated in blood but the land was already claiming him, wrapping him up in roots and the earth burning wherever it touched.

Calvin wished he had hands that could cover his nose to block out the overwhelming stench rising from the body. He bolted, not waiting to see what else fate had in store for it.

He saw similar sights along the way, vampires being held by the land, burnt by it as the wolf guard shredded them to pieces. It was a horrifying sight, the most horrifying of which was the moment when he ran past a fallen vampire woman whose heart had drummed so loud it had burst in her chest, the bones of her chest cavity rending and cracking as whatever force had been tugging on her heart finally pulled through. The spray of blood had caught him, burning though fur where it landed.

His own heart was thunderously pounding by the time he reached the safe house. So fast and hard he was sure that any moment it too would hammer its way through his chest to greet the world – here I am – to join those the forest had already claimed.  Getting inside was easy enough with the guard already engaged with the enemy, although that battle was now being won thanks to whatever strange grisly malady had assaulted all the vampires.

It was dark and cold inside the safe house, the usual warmth coming from the fire places and absent. The lit torches cast long shadows against the walls and the wooden doors of the cell doors. The sounds of warning growls and frightened whines escaped through their barred windows as the families locked within reacted to the sound of his sudden arrival. They were pushed to the brink by the smell and sounds of battle and death all around them, keenly aware that the steel enforced doors were their last line of defense should the guard fail.

Calvin shifted back onto two legs could smell the stench of vampire blood all around him, thick and cloying and he wanted to wretch. For a moment he couldn’t breathe. His weakened legs gave out and he fell against the wood of the back door with the thud and almost slid to the floor. He was cold for no reason he could explain, shivering so much his teeth were chattering. He told himself to keep moving but found himself unable to move any further. He wanted desperately to curl into a ball and scream but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything more than clutch at the door. He reached out for someone, anyone, and where he had always found the immediate sense of pack and the comfortable solidarity that emanated from the close bond of Westerville’s wolves there was now only an overwhelming clamor of pain and distress. It was like a scream, one long endless scream echoing with the ache of loss.

Something was wrong with the Alpha. There had to be if even he, an unsworn child, could feel Westerville’s pain this keenly.

His strength depleted Calvin O’Brennan slid to the stone floor of the safe house. There were tears pouring down his cheeks and a cold aching numbness growing in his chest.  He dropped his head into his hands, clutching tightly at his hair and sobbed.

And then, from the recesses of that great and terrible darkness swallowing his mind came a voice.

‘ _Calvin?’_

_~*~*~_

When the opportunity presented itself to escape Sebastian took it because whether it was by the hand of vampires or Westerville’s Alpha he was marked for death. He had resigned himself to whatever manner of gruesome death fate should deal him (and he personally thought it was going to be the fanged leachy kind because Anderson was a fool and had no chance whatsoever against the Master) but it had been hard not to feel fear or anger at the terrible unfairness of it all as he waited in the dark with the din of battle becoming louder and louder.

And then unexpectedly the boy had come. Sebastian was too far under the ground to hear his arrival, especially over the much louder sounds of screams and howls in the night, but he’d felt his presence like a breeze trickling through the night air. The boy was nearly insensible with shock and grief, reduced to little more than a child cowering in the dark from monsters.

Such weakness should have been distasteful – would have been – if not for the memories his cries pulled from Sebastian’s mind of being young, hiding in the dark with the scent of his mother’s blood perfuming the night air. He’d reached for the boys mind and hoped that whatever bond he’d fostered in the gullible needy _child_ that had followed him around most of the year would be enough to win him his freedom. A goal that became all the sweeter in his mind when he realized the boy’s purpose for being there. His mind was an open book, desperate as he was for comfort and purpose, and it was easy to see how he had gotten keys from the human doctor Blaine had working in his house. A doctor who occasionally needed to monitor the omegas who spent their heats locked in the safe house and were known to suffer complications.

Sebastian coaxed the boy out of the fog of fear that clouded his mind, whispered to him the words of comfort and the sweet platitudes that his young mind needed to hear, because with every step Calvin took toward him Sebastian was a step closer to freedom. He did it because it was easy, because it meant saving his life, but with every step closer that Calvin got the thought and taste of freedom faded, overwhelmed by the boy’s desperation.

His grief, his _need_ , it was like a black hole, sucking the very air from the room.

When Calvin finally stood in front of the locked door of Sebastian’s cell, one hand gripping the bars to the tiny window in the door, Sebastian crossed the room and took that hand through the bars because he felt that the boy would fall apart if he didn’t; because he remembered too well what it was like to be a child and have his world come crashing inward, to watch his home burn around him, and because Calvin’s tear filled eyes stared up at him in beautiful supplication – as if he had lost all sense of his place in the world and Sebastian’s hands covering his were the answer to every question and every ache.

His eyes were violet in torchlight. He made a picture of a frankly kind of dangerous beauty, far too appealing to the alpha in him that craved such things.

But for all that he was a child Calvin O’Brennan was no fool; because even as those eyes cut into Sebastian like blades, bidding the alpha to make the world right (or shape him in a way that Calvin might fit in the new world he found himself in) the key was held out of his reach.

“You say that everything will be alright. To trust you… but those are lies,” Calvin murmured on shallow breath and Sebastian held still, waiting. “I know what you are Sebastian Smythe and I know that you used me before.”

Sebastian blinked in surprise, not having expected such a confrontation in the boy’s current state. Though he was momentarily taken aback by the boy’s gumption he quickly refound his footing.

“I’m here to make a bargain with you,” Calvin declared, and Sebastian’s lips twitched in a smirk.

“For my freedom?” the alpha scoffed. “Knowing who and what I am, you of course realize that if you open those doors there is nothing keeping me to my word?”

“Except for greed. You want power,” Calvin grit out past still trembling lips. What an intriguing creature he was. Riddled with shock, still leaning into the touch of an alpha’s hands, and yet defiant. Obstinate. In someone older Sebastian might have found it attractive. In this child it was just amusing.

“And how can you promise me power?” Sebastian queried with a lift of his brow, genuinely curious despite himself.

“If you help me, if you help Blaine save us, he won’t kill you. He’ll owe you your life.”

“Fair point, but I could save myself some energy and just escape while he’s busy becoming leech food.”

“But your father and the rest of the MacTere will know that Blaine beat you and that you ran away. I’ve listened to your stories long enough to know that’s not something you want. You’re better off dead than running back with your tail between your legs.” Sebastian glowered at the boy, no longer finding him at all alluring or charming. The little wretch had the audacity to _smirk_ at him, almost mirroring Sebastian’s expression of a moment before as he added with bite, “clan rules say you got kicked by a pack dog and you aren’t worth _shit_ to any of them unless you prove your worth!”

“And how the hell does helping _Anderson_ achieve that!” Sebastian snapped. “He’s our enemy.”

“Because I say so and I’m what you need to get back on top!  My father is a pack Alpha. The title has been in our family for three generations by right of combat but my sister and I were born beta,” Calvin began to explain. “He doesn’t think either of us will be able to hold the title of Alpha. He hoped to secure our family’s future by mating my sister to the successor of his choice and mating me with Blaine.”

“Your father is an ambitious man.”

“Yes. And once he learns he can no longer secure a match with Blaine he is going to throw me at whatever alpha stooge he thinks he can control, but there’s a better option. An option that allows the rights and privileges of Alpha to stay within our family forever and for me to decide my fate on my own terms.”

Sebastian saw the boy’s angle immediately. The Guild rules for Alpha leadership were clear. Alphas fought other alphas for the rights to leadership and then were sanctioned by the Guild Council. Only the Andersons get the _privilege_ of hereditary rule.  Ridiculous as it was O’Brennan would have to renounce the Guild and declare himself and his territory an independent clan to keep what his family had fought for in his line of succession. It was a big risk to take as they would no longer be under Guild protection and no longer granted access to safe zones.

When you were a rogue it was open season from all sides and Sebastian was living proof that rogue life was not an easy one. But even as Sebastian thought it he could see where the idea might hold merit for an Alpha with any sense of ambition.

Ireland was a small country, far from the Guild’s power seat and already home to some of the world’s largest clans. Alliances could be made, deals struck, especially if Calvin’s father was willing to supply his neighbors with recourses and aide them in conquering new territories. None of the clans currently held a major city as territory. Dublin was no small prize. Sebastian knew some of the other clan leaders, knew the boons they would ask for and the things that would entice them to cooperate with the emergence of a new clan and even to possibly agree to a merger. Sebastian could effectively have it all if he and Calvin were to mate and play their cards wisely. It would be years in coming, the boy was a _child_ after all but six years was not so long. In fact it was just long enough for O’Brennan to plant the seeds of discord he’d need to sow to ensure his peoples support when he denounced the Guild.

“I know what you want Sebastian.” Calvin reiterated and this time the words struck him in his core because he realized it was true. The boy knew him even as Sebastian was realizing he knew very little of him in return. “You can get it, the kind of status you’ve always wanted. With my help, but I have terms.”

Sebastian swallowed thickly.

“What are your terms?”

“Help me save my home. Make peace with Blaine and never _ever_ try and betray me. You’ll regret it.”

As Calvin finished laying out the terms of the bargain Sebastian watched him, watched the way the fire burned behind his eyes as strength and conviction returned to him, and privately he thought that O’Brennan was a fool to think his son could not hold the right to Alpha just because he was not born one. But as they always say, one fools loss is another man’s gain.

*~*~*

Chandler woke to the sound of the furniture rattling and the sensation of the floor vibrating against his cheek. When he opened his eyes his vision was doubled so he quickly closed them again. After moment he opened them, blinking away the blur. There was a terrible ache throughout his body but it was most intense in his lower abdomen. He was lying on his front, bare ass to the world and there was a chill where the air met the sweat on his skin.

As the memories trickled back he took stock of his situation: two legged, pink skinned and outwardly whole, though not completely healed judging by the pain he was in. He had heard of a few rare occasions where wounds were not completely healed by shifting but they usually involved poison.  To be in this level of pain it had to mean that not everything had healed the way that it should. It wouldn’t surprise him. He was lying in a puddle of his own blood and there was something slimy pressed against his belly that had alarm slowly welling up inside him.

Shivering he attempted to roll to a sitting position and pain splintered through his gut. He gasped and gripped at his aching sides with a moan and looked down to survey the damage and promptly had to stifle the urge to heave. Although he’d somehow miraculously lived long enough to force his dying body to stitch itself back into the shape of a man there had been no repairing what had already been ripped away.

Chandler turned away from the gory sight of his own entrails plastered on the floor and gulped for breath. His body’s instinctive need to hurl was only prolonging the agony he was in as his strained muscles constricted. He did not want to think about what a mess he must be internally. In fact it was better not to think about any of it or else he wouldn’t be able to force himself to get up.

_‘You’ve got to get up Kheil. Have to get to the others.’_

He could hear the sounds of battle, of the fight raging through the Alpha’s home like fire razing a forest. He was not dead, and that meant his job was not done. Adam probably thought he was dead. Chandler might have been scared shitless by the whole getting his guts ripped out thing, but it was guard instinct one-o-one to shut out bonds that were going to be too distracting and they knew better than to allow those they loved to become tangled up in the emotions of the moment of death as that sort of distraction in the midst of battle often proved deadly. Even if Adam had tried to keep the bond open Chandler doubted his own end of it had been very active once he’d lost consciousness.

 _‘Adam’_ he called out tentatively and for a terrible moment there was nothing. Then distorted and distant as if Adam were shouting through a tunnel but still wonderfully there just the same came his reply.

_‘Oh thank god!’_

With that one beautiful exclamation of relief Chandler gave himself over to the wolf. The change hurt like it had never hurt before, the transition sluggish and agonizing with every breath. He screamed the whole way through it. When it was finally done he lay, spent, trying desperately to breathe as Adam’s gentle voice caressed at the back of his mind.

_‘That’s it… so beautiful, so brave, that’s my boy. Come on, Love. Look at you lying about when there’s work to do.’_

Chandler’s lips spread in a tired wolfy grin. He did love that man. He really did. He was going to catch him one of these days and mate him proper.

_‘Promise to never put me through something like that again and I’ll let you.’_

He totally hadn’t meant to think that openly but whatever. He was half dead so sue him.

 _‘You mean it?’_ Chandler’s thoughts buzzed with excitement as he struggled to his feet with renewed energy. No way he was going down when Adam had chosen this moment to finally see sense. _‘That sounds like a deal to me Crawford. No take backs!’_

_‘I wouldn’t dare. But listen to me Love, you need to get to the infirmary. They’re in real trouble. Blaine’s gone for the sword but we may not reach them in time. Get there and get everyone outside. They’ll be safer on the ground’._

It was then that Chandler really noticed the way the floor was trembling beneath him. Blaine must have activated the land’s safeguards which meant that outside was indeed the safest place for the pack to be. Their enemies were cursed and could no longer walk on their land without facing gruesome consequences.

 _‘I’ll get them out. You can count on me.’_ The protégé replied as he got his bearings and braced himself to spring into a sprint. His alpha’s reply warmed him so thoroughly all thought of his injuries faded away.

_‘I always could.’_

~*~*~*~

Jeff and Richard had joined the party of wolves in the south corridor who were fighting their way towards the infirmary. Noelle was leading them, the she-wolf a blur of teeth and claws as she fended off vampires and thralls alike. Bodies littered the corridor and though more of them were of the enemy her party had fallen down to just her and three other wolves. Jeff had immediately recognized Sugar Motta’s fluffy grey fur, even matted as it was with blood and sweat, and he’d leapt on top of the back of the thrall that had been bearing down on her from behind.

They fought with everything they had, keenly aware of the screams coming from the infirmary just a few hallways away and unable to do anything but slowly inch their way forward.

They attacked as a group, watching Noelle for the signals that told them what formations to make and when to strike. The thralls made it difficult as they were prone to attacking like berserkers, essentially throwing away their lives at their master’s behest with thoughtless abandon, just strong enough to be an unavoidable distraction as their stronger faster masters struck devastating blows and scattered them about.

Slowly but surely they were losing and the screams from the infirmary were just getting louder.

‘ _Wes.’_ He called desperately to his alpha-master as he and Richey rushed at the feet of one of the vampires forcing her back into Sugar’s waiting teeth. _‘We need help!’_

‘ _We’re on our way. Get them outsi-’_ Wes’s voice was distant, tiny and fading in and out and then away altogether as if he were speaking through a bad connection. Jeff didn’t know what that meant but as Wes said nothing more he resigned himself to the fact that reinforcements would not be coming.

A forceful hand came down across his back, nails scoring his flesh and the force of the palm hard enough to send him flying away from the vampire he’d been helping his three comrades rip into pieces. The adjacent wall forced him to stop. He hit it with a smack and a yelp of pain.

 _‘Jeff!’_ the sudden blast of Nik’s voice in his head, so close and so loud, nearly took Jeff by as much surprise as his appearance. It took him a moment to realize that only one of the wolves who had just come streaking into the fray like missiles carried the pack scent. For one terrible moment Jeff thought that Nik and Sebastian escaping their cells meant that they were there to finish whatever plan they and Blaine’s brother had come up with, but Nik headed straight for the vampire that had attacked Jeff while Smythe’s familiar lupine form doubled up on the quick dark skinned leech that Noel and Patricia were trying to take down.

 _‘The infirmary. We’ve got to get everybody out.’_ Elated, Jeff tried to tell them to get to the others, before it was too late. Wes had wanted everybody outside – at least that’s what Jeff thought he’d been trying to say.

_‘On it.’_

He thought the peppered blur that zig zagged through the lot of them, charging through the vampire’s line of defense and toward the infirmary, might have been Chandler and that the red coated pup following closely at his heels might have been Calvin. He was a little dazed from the blow he’d taken so he couldn’t be sure. But no matter how dazed he was Jeff couldn’t miss the way Smythe shouted after the pup with fear and worry.

What the hell was up with that?

 _‘Was this your idea of being careful?’_ Nik chastised as Jeff struggled back onto four paws and the blond alpha huffed.

_‘Well you know, since you took your sweet time being of any use Duvall.’_

_‘I was locked up!’_ Came Nik’s indignant reply and Jeff shook off the daze still clouding his mind with a full bodied toss of fur and toothy grin. It was odd, seeing as the situation was no less dire than it had been a moment before but just having Nik there, ready and at his back, he felt stronger.

_‘Always with the excuses.’_

With something almost like exhilaration flowing smoothly between them, both alphas leapt back into the fray.

~*END PART ONE*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes. This is part one. which means YES you'll be waiting for one more update. I chose to section the finale into two parts because it's better for posting, and there is a definite change in pace between this and the latter portion (which will primarily be in Kurt's perspective). That portion has already had one write but I'm letting it cool before I attempt a final edit, because I'm still not sure of it and I think at this point I'm just too close to it. So I'm posting this and next Friday I will post the second part. :)
> 
> That said I really hope you enjoyed this part (or at least made it through in once piece). Overall less people than I originally intended are going to perish in this installment (thanks to my decision to save Finn) but I'd love your feedback as I prepare to set the ending in stone. lol there will be no going back after that. As always, thank you guys from the bottom of my heart for sticking with this. I will see you Friday the 20th.


	39. Symphony Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the battle ends. For now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are here! The last and final part. I will be uploading a short epilogue following this but this is well and truly the final chapter of this story. You made it. Buckle in. It's fast paced. Fun fact: I debated long and hard on what Benito and Lina's lullaby was going to be, as it will make reappearances in the sequels. It came down to Baby Mine from Disney's dumbo and the Golden Globe winning song titled "Mothers Prayer" from Quest For Camelot. I chose Mother's Prayer because overall I liked the symbolism, I liked that I got to use something from one of my childhood favs (and another Arthurian tale at that) and I adore Andrea Boticelli (from the duet version of the song) and thought what with Lina being both Italian and having a blind twin who dreamed of making music, it just all felt very right for her. So I highly suggest you run and not walk to listen to that song and prepare to bawl for like seven days the way I did.

 

**Key:**

The Crown is primarily made of a metal called ‘palladium’ which when alloyed with gold creates what we call white gold. The gems on it are black opal. The same metal and gems are found on Excalibur. 

 **Languages translated:**  

(Sogniamo un mondo…. [ _Italian_ ]) We dream of a world without violence, a world of justice and hope. Where each passes a hand to his neighbor.

(Wangja [Korean]) Prince.

(Asilo [Italian]) Nursery.

 **INDIVIDUAL CHAPTER WARNING:** Graphic violence. Character death, depictions of suicide. Please be safe and avoid your triggers.

~*~*~

PART 2

~*~*~

 

Blaine and his companions fought their way toward the crypt at the back of the house. They’d not encountered many of the vampires on that side, likely do to the dense wood and the expansive lake shining through the trees making it difficult for their enemy to form a circle around them.

The land’s enchantment was in full effect. Those who stepped upon it without his protection and failed its test were slowly being killed. Many of the vampires they encountered on their way to the crypt had abandoned fight altogether and were attempting to flee for their lives. They engaged with those who forced it but otherwise Blaine kept them moving steadily toward their goal, unconcerned with the potential escape of their enemies. Whether they realized it or not, all those who had come that day with ill intent in their hearts were already cursed. The wrath of the king would be felt by them and their sons, and their son’s sons for many generations to come. The battle here was all over but the shouting. But Cooper was still out there somewhere and he had Kurt, so Blaine’s fight had only just begun and it was a fight he had no intention of losing.

He left Ian with Santana and Rachel standing guard around the entrance to the crypt and took Wes and Adam with him inside. Both of them had already been trusted with the cyrpts secrets and the other two might need Ian’s assistance above ground if something were to go wrong. The enchantments protecting the crypt were so strong that even communication over bonds would be difficult.

When they reached Andrew McMorrows tomb they paused only long enough for Blaine to open the secret door. Blaine raised his palm to his mouth. Biting through the skin felt almost too easy, too right, the punishing sting sweet in an otherwise heavy soup of emotions.  Kurt might be suffering torture even now. What was a little cut on the hand?

_‘We did this together. This was my choice remember? I knew the risks, so don’t insult me by acting like this is your fault. ’_

Imagining what Kurt would have said was one part bolstering, almost like having him there. It was that ‘almost’ that made the other part a private hell. He reached behind Andrew’s tomb and felt for the hidden lever. Once grasped he pulled. The cold stone grated against the open wound on his hand, but the familiar pulse of warmth that went through his palm numbed the pain as magic was appeased and the door leading to the chambers below began to slide open.

They walked through the narrow hall beyond the secret door, their forms bathed in pale blue torch light. When they reached the chamber at the end of the passage way they paused again in front of the wall of wizards fire that guarded the door.

Blaine turned to his two companions and warned them that they should never attempt to cross this point without him, and that even with him should they fail the fire’s test they would not be spared its wrath. When both had nodded their understanding, shoulders squared with determination, Blaine led them through the flame.

The pain was familiar – an icy burn racing up from his toes and back again in a sudden swell that took the breath – as was the blinding glare as the wall of flame reached up to surround them. It was so thick he could barely see either Wes or Adam, though they stood not inches from him on either side. Amidst the fires roar he thought he heard clinking like that of metal on stone and, inexplicably, the sound of male voices raised in merriment.

The world had reduced to shadows and the waving of flames and in them figures seemed to move. Blaine turned to his right to find Wes and startled, finding instead a stranger. Though his form was shrouded in a wall of writhing flame Blaine saw clearly the stranger’s strange yet familiar face, his dark hair long and facial hair trimmed and well kept. He was dressed in a tunic and mail. The tunic was so rich a green the color stood out even through the fires glare. The heat was enough to make the eyes water, forcing Blaine to blink as he stumbled and then searched to his left, for Adam and now for Wes. But even there he was met with strange visions.

There was another stranger, dressed similarly as the other, only his was a tunic of white upon which a bold red cross had been stitched across the breast. His hair was as fair as Adam’s but the similarity stopped there.

And yet, Blaine felt as if he knew him. He knew them both he realized as, as if pulled from a dream he’d once had, he remembered the stories his brothers had once put him to bed with.

_Sir Gawain the green knight was Arthur’s most loyal knight and the dear friend of his champion Sir Lancelot. Sir Percival, the gentle, was wise and kind, a man who did not seek war but engaged gladly in the defense of the meek and other pursuits he considered holy. When Lancelot’s son Galahad refused to squire for him, it was Gawain who suggest that Lancelot hand the boy to Percival, for nowhere would Lancelot find a gentler teacher or a man so like the child in mind…_

And then they were through. The roar dissipated and the fire quelled, back into a thin line of blue guarding the door behind them. Wes and Adam stood on either side of him just as they had always been, shaken but unharmed. If either of them had seen anything strange in the fire none of them spoke of it, though Blaine could tell by the fear and wonder in their eyes that he had not been alone in the experience. The thought that these two men who had stood up with him when they had only been boys… that maybe they had been standing with him far longer than he could have realized. That, more than anything else had yet, comforted him in Kurt’s absence.

“Let’s get your mate back,” Wes murmured, clapping his shaking hand against Blaine’s back and Blaine nodded.

*~*~*

_Though many would write it as such, Lady Igraine of Pendragon did not go to the tower the day the rein of her husband Uther Pendragon came to its bloody end, with intent to throw herself from its heights. She did go however, knowing that such a sacrifice might be required. It was not the outcome that she hoped for but she was prepared that day to embrace it. Death did not inspire the same fear in her that it had always inspired in Uther. She neither resented nor feared her mortality, for the going and passing of lives was as natural to her as the flow of time. A gift in perspective given to her by her old nurse maid, the one she’d called grandmother, who in truth was more mother to her than the mother who had born her._

_It was Grandmother who had taught her the ways of the old wise women (who had whispered to her of the medbs of old and the magic seeped into Ireland’s blood and soil). Grandmother had been careful, always careful, to keep her whispers from the ears of Igraine’s father the king. Bertanand Mac Murchadha was a pious man, deeply ingrained with the sort of piety that came down upon ones back like a lash. There had been no pilgrimage for Igraine to the Great Wood where it was said the Lady of the Lake dwelled, and though he had come down upon Uther Pendragon like a scourge in retaliation for her abduction she knew it was not love that sent her father and his men following her steps that day, but a deeply rooted hate._

_Igraine went to the top of the tower because of what she carried in her hands. It was all that she had left to care for. The babe had been dealt with before her father’s army had reached their doors. Secreted away in the night to the arms of the one person Igraine trusted to care for him in her stead. His loss was felt like a deep ache in her bones and it showed no signs of passing, but that pain she welcomed as readily as her next task (more so) because it was evidence that he had been there. She had not imagined the existence of her son or the happiness that had carried him into the world on the back of so much anguish. It was a reminder of the loss of that happiness, and she needed that to have the strength to do what she must do for the protection of her legacy._

_In her hands Igraine carried Uther’s crown. Far from an imposing headdress Uther’s crown was a simple thing: a thin circulate of gold so pale it was nearly white, engraved richly with vines and runes in a script unknown by man, and embedded with three black gems whose bellies seemed alive with blue fire. The largest stone sat directly in the middle, so deep a black it could have been the night sky. The swirls of blue deep within it were churning so slowly that if one blinked, they’d come to think they’d imagined it. Igraine had once wondered at the understated ornament for a king as mighty as Uther, but she had come to realize that the smallest and simplest of things were the ones of the greatest power; it was that power which she had witnessed corrupting Uther’s mind, making the ‘mad king’ mad._

_It had taken nearly everything she had to convince Uther that the crown must be relinquished to her hands and to allow her to make that long awaited pilgrimage to the great lady’s lake. She had promised to save their legacy, to restore him to the man they both wished he would be – the father he needed to be for their boy – but such promises were lofty, and she supposed in hindsight they had always been meant to be broken. The Lady of the Lake had given her back the crown and told her that it must only be worn by a true king, a man who was pure in heart and had no love of power. The opposite of all that his fathers were before him. Uther must save himself and their Arthur, he must grow to be a better man or suffer the same fate under his father’s crown. Such was its price._

_Uther was dead and Arthur was far away in the arms of Grandmother. Her father and his men were closing in. They wanted not the daughter who had consorted with demons and born the babes of devils, but the small but beautiful thing she held between her palms, still warm with the blood of her mate. She had always known the sort of man her father was, that her brothers were, and if she allowed them to take it the crown would pass from one mad king to another, and another, and another, either until there was nothing left of the world or it finally found a son whose heart stood up to its test. Unless she cursed the cursed thing and bound it to her own blood. In that way she could rob her father of his victory and if fate should be kind, keep at least half of her promises._

_One day Arthur would be king, and if he were anything like she prayed he would be then he would be the sort of man who did not covet power but understood it for the double sided blade it was and learn to wield it with a measure of wisdom. She and Uther would of course be dead but their legacy would live on._

_She knew that with her actions she would be assigning her son a destiny that he might not want. Her only comfort was that in that not wanting, he might save himself. Save them all._

~*~*~

When Lina had been a girl it was the custom at the Villa de’Medici for the household to meet within the chapel each evening for compline. While her mother had been alive, she had come each evening to collect Lina and her brother Lorenzo from the nursery. They were always bathed after super, for one did not come before God with crumbs on their cheeks, and dressed in their finest robes to patiently for their mother’s arrival. The walk from the asilo to the chapel was always intimidating: candles burning low in place of electric light, their family and the rest of the Hunter Order led by red robed Cardinals into the house of the Lord in somber procession. The last office always ended with the reciting of the virgin mother’s prayer,  _Sub Tuum Praesidium;_ and it was as her mother would lean to help guide her hands in prayer, her perfume sweet in Lina’s nose as she pressed close to whisper the correct Latin, that the fear had always melted into a wonderful awe.

_We flee to thy protection, oh Mary Mother of God. Despise not our petitions in our necessity, but deliver us from peril O pure and blessed one. Amen._

The prayers, second nature to her, came as easily as they ever had. Lina was neither scholar nor clergyman. She would never deign to speak on the nature of gods or what their purposes were. But she had always taken a measure of comfort from the Madonna. Perhaps it was because her own mother had been her greatest comfort in the frightening world she’d been born into… whatever the reason, she’d felt a kinship with her. Mary had only been a girl: a young girl with greatness thrust upon her. And then she’d been a mother to a god, and now the world over men and women knelt to her bringing with them their prayers and their worries. Had any of them ever thought to wonder what she’d felt that day, when the angel had visited her? Had God ever asked Mary if she wished to become ‘Mary Mother of God’ mother of all, and if he had, how might she have answered?

As a girl Lina had often wondered these things. She prayed to the Virgin Mother now as she waited for what was to come.

There was little warning before the enemy came to the cage to get them. It was the sudden stillness that caught their attention, the captives within looking outward to find that the collection of vampires surrounding the stone altar had ceased all discussion and stood silent as statues staring back at them. And then four of them broke away from the circle, gliding purposefully toward them in the dark, the fabric of their clothing billowing behind them.

Lina’s heart was pounding steadily as the wooden branches untwined with creaks and groans, and a pale hand descended down from above with wicked nails extended like claws. She pulled Benito behind her. The hand of the vampire woman gripped the flesh of Lina’s arm instead and pulled her unceremoniously out of the quickly disappearing cage and thrust her toward the waiting altar. If she noticed Benito’s nakedness or felt it at all odd she said nothing. In fact the woman paid her no more attention at all, turning her focus to helping one of her accomplices wrestle the lycan who called himself Puck to his feet. Lina supposed as an omega she didn’t appear as much of a threat. Or perhaps her James had warned them against harming her. Likely it was both. She was glad for it, given the alternative, and more importantly given what she had to do.

Benito’s slight frame trembled against her back. His small hands fisted the back of her shirt as he whined low and distressed. Surreptitiously she bent to console him, using her own body to block him from the view of those waiting at the altar – from his father’s watchful eyes – and under the guise of soothing him she stroked against his spine, encouraging his body to shift.

_“Do you remember what we discussed? Cry, loudly, so that they think you are very upset. But you aren’t are you? You’re mama’s brave bambino. You will be brave and go to the place where we agreed? No looking back.”_

He stared up at her with tear filled blue eyes and let loose a piercing wail that struck her chest like a blow. Her boy did not need to pretend at fear, it was all around them pulling at every sense. She held him close, stroked the soft canvas of his skin and filled her lungs with his scent the way that he had filled her heart. Softly she began to sing to him the song she’d sung to him nearly every night since she’d carried him.

Her dear Enzo had taught it to her. So enamored with the beautiful melody and the accomplishment of another blind musician, he’d insisted it was hope. It had always felt that way to her. She hoped it would impart the same to Benito, her darling Benito, as he left her behind him…and that if such things were allowed, her Enzo would be watching over him. Either way Benito would have her voice as long as she could give it to him.

“I pray you’ll be our eyes,” she sang softly. “And watch us where we go. Help us to be wise, in times when we don’t know. Let this be our prayer when we lose our way. Lead us to a place…  guide us with your grace… Give us faith, so we’ll be safe.”

She continued to sing as baby soft skin became puppy soft fur, as his howls quieted back to whines and then quieted altogether. Her brave, beautiful boy… he was the best of the world: the best of her and her _amato_ , of his grandfathers and the mothers and wives before her. He was a part of them unspoiled by time or any of life’s sufferings. So much promise in a bundle so small. She would see that promise fulfilled, even if it was not by her own eyes.

Quietly Lina slipped the pendant Ian had given her over his head so that it hung from his neck.

~*~*~*~

“ _Sogniamo un mondo senza più violenza. Un mondo di giustizia e di speranza. Ognuno lo dia la mano al suo vicino_ …”

Lina’s voice quiet and lilting followed Kurt as he, his father, and Puck were dragged roughly up the mound. He was being held by Julia Chang. Despite the woman’s delicate looking appearance her grip was iron strong up until the moment she deposited him at the feet of Cooper and Aurel, shoving him roughly to his knees and pulling both arms behind his back. He was shivering, due to the increasing chill in his body – symptoms he suspected were caused by prolonged separation from Blaine – but he did his best not to show his fear.  The blond vampire master stared down at him and for the first time Kurt could see unhidden fury in the red of his eyes. There was almost something frantic about him, an aura of hysteria accompanying the heaviness of his breathing.

Something must have happened, but Kurt could only wonder what.

Cooper on the other hand looked the picture of calm as he watched Lina. Her voice had faded into quiet breathes but the last notes of her song still lingered. Slowly she stood from her crouch and turned toward them, her steps slow and measured. She looked up to find Cooper’s gaze and saw that he had a hand extended to her, a gallant gesture that was out of place in their gruesome setting, but she took it and allowed him to pull her tightly to his side. A frown of confusion creased the man’s brow and a moment later Kurt understood why as he searched and saw no sign of Benito. The boy had been with Lina when the Changs and the others had come for them but now he was nowhere to be found. Cooper leaned close and Lina went up on her tip toes to murmur softly what sounded like she didn’t want Benito to watch.

To watch them be hung from those crosses and bled like those unfortunate thralls. Yeah Kurt had to say he didn’t want the boy watching that either.

Aurel’s eyes burned into her with such a bone deep hatred Kurt’s stomach soured. He’d made a terrible mistake. Put her in more danger than he’d ever realized.

“Lina Medici,” Aurel hissed at her with murder in his eyes. “Apparently not Anderson’s whore as I’d once presumed. Well, not that Anderson anyhow.”

Kurt glared at the vampire but Aurel wasn’t looking at him. He was taken aback by the warning growl that erupted from Cooper’s throat as he tugged Lina closer to him. Kurt doubted the others noticed the way she flinched, but he saw the tension keeping her body tight.

“Watch your tongue Aurel or I’ll feed it to you,” Cooper threatened and Kurt’s eyes widened. Next to him in the grass Burt made an aborted noise that might have been a moan and Kurt’s eyes flew to him with worry. He was pale and shaking but other than a thin stream of blood trickling down his chin where he’d apparently bitten his lip he appeared fine.

“Our army has been destroyed. Your great plans lay in tatters about you and you _dare_ to threaten me?!” Aurel spat through bloodied fangs and Blaine’s brother pinned him with glacial blue eyes.

“It doesn’t matter Aurel. We’ve been through this. The crown is what we want and once the _portim_ reopens Blaine will bring it.”

Another _portim_ was going to open? Kurt franticly thought. Well of course it was. How else would they expect Blaine to deliver their ransom? But that meant Blaine didn’t need to track him and he’d asked Lina to put herself in danger for no reason. His eyes found hers with fear filled apology and she risked the minutest of head shakes in his direction.

“He will slaughter us!” Aurel was thundering, completely ignoring them.

“He’ll do no such thing. Not when I can do this.” Without looking in his direction Cooper raised a hand and suddenly Kurt’s neck was unbearably heavy. He began to choke as his throat became constricted, falling to his knees as the weight around his neck increased, his hands flying to the metal collar locked around his throat.

“Hey, stop it! Stop don’t hurt him!” he heard his father shout and then a thud as flesh hit flesh and a pain filled grunt and Burt fell silent. Then as quickly as it had come the pressure was gone and Kurt fell forward, gasping for breath. Julia Chang took his arms again and he resisted weakly but the gesture was futile. He thought he understood what Lina was trying to tell him now. It didn’t matter whether or not Blaine needed to track him. So long as he was trapped like this Cooper would win. The wizard who had thus far stood silently cleared his throat and at that moment interjected.

“Master, it is nearly time. The _portim_ is about to reopen.”

With a final hard stare in Aurel’s direction Cooper turned and nodded to the wizard who in turn gestured to those holding Kurt and his companions and once again they were all being jerked to their feet. Kurt watched fearfully as his father and Puck were taken to two of the empty crosses and strapped to them with thick white rope.  They both struggled but his father, a human male, was no match for Michael Chang; and Puck despite being lycan appeared as unable to access that strength as Kurt was.

He told them it was going to be okay, but he knew it was an empty promise. The smell of their distress was thick in the air, curdling in his belly. Julia’s iron grip on his arms did not ease as she hauled him to the last of the empty crosses. The heaviness of his collar returned to pin him down and his feeble struggles were only worthy of mockery as she bound him tightly first by the feet and then by each wrist. As she bound the last limb her dark eyes glittered down at him in the moonlight, her stare just as piercing as he remembered it from earlier that evening on the steps of the manor.

“ _Is this where you die, little wangja? Or will you save yourself on the blood of another?”_ Her voice slithered through his mind cool and smooth like a snakeskin and he shivered. He tried to resist it but her words stuck like barbs and he felt his eyes dart toward Lina. A gleam of amusement appeared in Julia’s eyes but otherwise she showed no signs of having seen, let alone interpreted the gesture. She stood and moved to rejoin her husband and the rest of her comrades. It took a moment to get past the pounding terror in his veins enough to realize that his right wrist was not bound as tightly as the other had been. He did not dare think it intentional but he didn’t dare bring attention to it either.

“They are secured,” Julia murmured to Cooper and Blaine’s brother nodded, a boyish grin taking over his face, and turned to the wizard.

“Let the games begin. Shall we St. James?”

The wizard nodded solemnly and raised his hands. Kurt’s heart sank with dread.

~*~*~

Jesse St. James stood in front of the stone alter in the center of a circle of liquid light. It had burst back into being like a volcanic eruption as he lifted his palms skyward, the light blinding at first and then slowly ebbing as he lowered his hands. Slowly the color and flow of the light changed to reflect that of blood flowing black under the moonlight. The hairs on Lina’s arms raised as the scent of it copper and fresh filled her nose. A gasp from Puck pulled her eyes to the crosses where the ghastly sight of bleeding corpses met her.

Blood, black and thick, flowed freely from the hung bodies of the thralls as if their wounds had been inflicted only moments before. Like Christ, in his final moments.

Lina forced each breath. In and out. Slow and deep.

Had Mary watched? Just as she was watching now?

Lina prayed.

_‘Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.’_

Puck had thrown back his head and begun to howl as the sky rumbled with thunder.  Long and loud, not as robust as his wolf lungs would have managed, but as strong a call as he could muster. The last song of a proud alpha. But he wasn’t alone. Kurt’s voice joined his and then they were singing together.

_‘I shall fear no evil.’_

Had Mary watched – the wizard stood beneath the father, stone bowl raised to catch the blood as he drove knife deep into his side – as the spear had pierced her son’s side? Had she ached for the end of his suffering, cursed him for the rejection of the wine that would have dulled the sting?

Kurt did not look away from his father, even as the wizard moved on to Puck and the alpha’s song died in a strangled howl of pain.

_‘Yea though I walk through the valley…’_

She hoped that Benito had done as he’d promised and run all the way back to the car, and that he had found a place to hide. She hoped he would not look back or come running if she screamed. She hoped she didn’t scream.

Lina swallowed thickly and turned to look at her mate. Cooper… James (for he would always be that to her… _her_ James) was watching the ceremony with rapt attention, blue eyes wide with awe as lightning lit them in sporadic flashes.

“James…” her voice was meek. Too quiet given the booming sky and trembling ground. Too weak. No good. No help… she had to be stronger. She cleared her throat, and gripped the arm he had wrapped around her waist. “James!”

He started as if she had poked him and slowly his head turned toward her, eyes reluctant to leave the bloody spectacle before them. Lina’s heart was galloping, fear so strong it was bitter in her mouth. It only grew worse as the glowing red eyes of the vampire master Aurel turned toward them.

But the wizard was standing beneath Kurt now. The contents of the bowl were sloshing as he raised it above his head, toward the moonlight as he chanted.

“Cinis cinerem et pulverem terrae.” _Ashes to ashes. Dust of the earth_.

 “Take off the collar. Please,” she pleaded and Aurel let out a violent hiss. She flinched and James wrapped his arms around her tighter. Protecting her.

“Peccata patris sui. Nunc in sanguine mundantur!” _Sins of the father purged in blood_. Jesse raised the ceremonial knife high and a low whine pushed through her teeth.

“I can’t Beautiful, the collar is the only thing preventing-”

“Please! Mi amato, please.” She insisted turning in his arms until she could face him, so that they were chest to chest as they had not been in years. She grasped him by both cheeks and pulled until the blue of his eyes met hers and there was nothing in his vision but her. He saw the moment that Kurt’s scream went through her, as if the knife had sunk into her own belly and he held her so tightly, such fear flashing momentarily across his face that it was almost beautiful. He had always been beautiful to her. Why hadn’t that changed? After everything… shouldn’t it have?

She did not know. But in this moment she needed what they had once had. She allowed herself to do what she had never thought she would. She chased the spark of warmth his worry lit in her chest. She sank into the feeling and did not fear its depths. She welcomed them, and returned to him the fullness of her love, as deep as she’d ever felt it.

And in that moment the world truly fell away. There were no more horrors. No pasts and no futures hanging over them with unbearable weight. No names to call their yoke. There was only them and the stars they stood beneath. Them, as they were, with all their holes and jagged edges. Them as they had ever been.

He stood beneath her stars and breathed a sigh of relief so deep it had a life of its own. She stood beneath his and smiled with the youth he’d stolen from her.

 _“Mi amato… my love. Do you truly love me?”_ She cupped the curves of his face, so beloved to her, so dearly longed for.

 _“Yes.”_ His truth, simple and unadorned riding the crest of a sob. _“And you love me. You’re the only one I’m sure ever has.”_

_“I have. I will… for our always. But you know what that means.”_

_“I won’t let you go!”_

_“No. Never that. Never again. But you did before. You left me alone, so alone in that dark… but I will forgive you if you will only be with me now.”_

_“I am.”_

_“You must let this go. We will do it together. We will be brave and whatever comes, I promise we will be together.”_

_“As we were meant?”_

She nodded as she rested her head upon his chest relief draining the strength from her body.

_“Ci, mi amato. As we are meant.”_

With a smile of relief Lina closed her eyes and let the world rush back in.

Privately she thought that this was what Mary must have felt at the end.

_‘It is finished.’_

~*~*~*~

When Jesse St. James had stabbed him Kurt couldn’t hold back his scream. The young wizard had thrust and torn across his belly in a swift violent motion that left no room for doubt that he was looking for as much blood flow without immediate death as possible. He would never have guessed it… of all the things he thought he’d think of if he was ever stabbed, he did not think he’d think of that little girl he’d seen in his dream. She’d had Blaine’s eyes and she’d called him daddy. All he could think about was her and the fact that there was a knife buried in his abdomen and there was so much blood.

He would never really be quite sure he knew what happened after that. He remembered the pain, not really being able to see despite how wide he opened his eyes because all of his senses were focused on pain and blood and the shrill drumming of terror in his veins.

But even pain had movement because once it had muted to something past blinding he could hear Aurel shouting with rage. He’d just managed to lift his head to look – to see despite how badly he just wanted to close his eyes and be _done –_ when a shadow passed over him. A bird: his frazzled mind put together even as he watched something else black and huge dart across the field with furious speed, heading straight for Aurel who was for no reason that Kurt could fathom, once again in a heated argument with Blaine’s brother.

A wolf he realized as the lycan burst onto the scene. The shape of him and something in the supple motion of his body was familiar to Kurt.

“Blaine?” his voice scraped out of his throat, but even as he spoke that hope was fading. This wolf was smaller, leaner than Kurt’s alpha and clearly younger. To his shame the hot sting of tears joined the pain of his other wounds. The unknown wolf leapt onto Aurel’s back and the moment the vampire master was preoccupied Cooper Anderson strode towards Kurt.

“Master?” The wizard, Jesse, questioned but Cooper did not deign to answer him. Kurt’s head lolled to the side as he watched helplessly. He didn’t even have the strength to flinch as Cooper knelt over him, his gaze unfocused but every ounce of his movement determined. Oh god was he…? Had Lina…?

_‘Oh please, oh God please…’_

Cooper reached for him and Kurt shuddered, but the older man’s hands did not descend upon his body, but rather the metal collar wrapped around his throat. It took Kurt a moment to realize what the clicking sound in his ears meant, and the clink of metal hitting the ground. And then like a tidal wave all that the horrible thing had taken away was rushing back in. The pull of his bonds. The wild of the wolf. It was all there, all howling and churning inside like a tempest. Blaine was there. Reaching.

He wept.

And then cresting through the night air came the howls. Kurt’s heart leapt in his chest, relief such beautiful relief soaring through him as he opened his throat and howled back in reply.

That was Pack. They were here. He was no longer alone.

“What have you done!” Aurel’s scream of rage jarred him out of the moment. He wasn’t safe. He was a liability trussed up like a lamb for slaughter. He had to get free. Get to Blaine. Get to Benito like he’d promised. Not bothering with stealth Kurt began to yank and twist his right arm, putting all of his slowly returning strength into breaking the loosest of his bindings, thanking whatever deity would have him for Julia Chang’s carelessness.

“I… I don’t…” Cooper struggled to answer his brow furrowing deeper with confusion as he looked down at Kurt, as if he had no idea how he had gotten there. Just as the rope binding Kurt’s right arm finally snapped the howls came again, this time louder and much closer, drawing all eyes to the bottom of the mound where a circle of wolves now stood glaring up at them, a lone human figure standing beside the largest of them.

Wes, Adam, Chandler, Jeff, Nick and Sebastian. The wind brought him their scents, but Kurt’s eyes were glued to the large black wolf standing just that bit in front of the others, his coat gleaming in the moonlight. Blaine. He knew it was him even though there was an odd silver ring of light in his irises that he had never seen before. He’d know Blaine anywhere. Kurt reached for his mind but flinched away at the last second, some instinct warning him away as he was met with a kind of heat he’d never felt come from his mate’s mind before. Blaine’s mind seemed on fire and it would have terrified him if not for Ian’s calm presence beside him.

Ian stood with Blaine, one hand laid gently upon Blaine’s head, his white hair fluttering in the wind as it picked up speed and Kurt heard Jesse St. James swallow harshly.

Blaine howled and then he and the others were charging up the hill.

Kurt focused on nothing else but working himself free, aware that at any moment so long as he was tied he could either be killed or used as a weapon against Blaine and that he could not avoid distractions.

The moment he was free of the accursed ropes he scrambled away from the cross, onto the soft grass still wet with his blood. He pushed back the feeling of disgust and embraced the wolf, biting his lip as pain splintered through him anew. But it was temporary. He was shifting, healing, strong and right again (but maybe not where it counted, not where he could fix) and he was going to kill them for what they’d done!

It seemed to Kurt that the wolf was already leaping even before the shift was done. As if it had come bursting from him like an angered demon all teeth and snarl as he leapt upon the back of an unwary vampire, teeth gripping vulnerable throat and tearing before the creature could so much as scream. Something rushed at his back: Aurel Kurt realized with a burst of adrenaline but he was stopped by Jeff who came streaking up like a missile, attacking at the vampire’s flank.

All of them fought with ferocity (with the vengeance of the wolf burning in their hearts) but there was something remarkable about how fast Blaine was, how strong he was, as he left a bloody trail between himself and his target. He tore off the arm of an assailant as easily as ripping paper, black blood spraying in the moonlight as he dropped his kill and he continued his charge.

 _‘Ian?’_ Kurt asked, because he was still unsure of how to reach Blaine like this.

 _“Excalibur. It uses the power of the crown,”_ the wizard replied and Kurt swallowed, thinking again of the silver he’d seen in Blaine’s eyes. There was no sword in sight but seeing Blaine in action he could believe it. And when the sky rolled with thunder once more and lightning crashed for a moment he could see it.

*~*

_Lancelot stood upon the hill his dark hair tossing in the wind. In his hand he gripped the jeweled hilt of a blade that gleamed so pale it was nearly white. Dotted about him on the battlefield were Sirs Gawain, Kay, Tristan and Percival. The lady Islode stood beside the queen, who stared up at the dark haired knight with yawning longing. The longing turned to fear as Lancelot raised his sword – the black gems in the hilt catching moonlight and bursting with blue flame within their bellies – and attacked the monster atop the hill._

_“Lancelot!” Gwyn screamed his name, running toward him._

_~*~_

‘ _Blaine!’_ Kurt screamed his name a second time as Blaine charged toward Cooper. He was terribly afraid for him, for them all. He had the worst feeling that Excalibur or no, Cooper would be no easy kill and no matter what the man had done he was Blaine’s kin. And Lina… poor Lina. She’d already lost so much.

Something hit the side of his face and he reeled in pain, yelping sharply. Thankfully it was just a flesh wound, and thankfully Sebastian Smythe had leapt upon Aurel’s front and begun savaging what vulnerable points he could reach along with Jeff who had been thrown but was once again leaping on the vampire master’s back.

 _‘What the hell are you waiting for Useless?!’_ Sebastian growled harshly at him even as Aurel dug sharp nails into his back and flung the lycan from him as if he weighed no more than a sack of potatoes. Smythe yelped in pain as he hit the ground and Kurt winced as Aurel proceeded to grab Jeff similarly and peeled the lycan teen off his back despite the teeth and nails Jeff had sunk in him.

Nick rushed past Kurt with a shove.

‘ _Go! I’ll help them.’_ And then he was leaping on Aurel with a blood thirsty snarl.

Kurt didn’t know when those two had decided they were all on the same side, but he did not need to be told twice. He turned searching the hilltop quickly for Blaine – he found Wes tangled up with a vampire female but holding his ground, Chandler and Adam attempting to subdue the Changs, Ian locked in battle with the younger wizard, and then there finally – he found him facing off with Cooper.

There were bleeding scratches on Coopers face and arms, his clothing torn and seeped with blood where Blaine had clearly wounded him. Kurt’s stomach lurched when he noted that Blaine was not without his own winds, one particularly bad one open and bleeding profusely on his side.

“Stop! Please, stop both of you!” Lina was shouting at them both from the ground. She didn’t try to get between them, but by the bruises on her face and arms Kurt figured she’d probably already tried that and learned better from it.

“How about it Blainey?” Cooper taunted, spitting blood from his grinning mouth. “Should I stop?”

 _‘You’re dead, Cooper!_ ’ Blaine promised, leaping with blinding speed. ‘ _You died when you took him from me.’_

 _‘Blaine!’_ Kurt tried reaching him again, running for them but all he found was heat and pressure and dizzying rage.

Cooper disappeared like smoke, reappearing at Blaine’s back to grab and lift him as if he weighed nothing and slam him back into the ground. The snapping of bone was loud in Kurt’s ears and Blaine’s pain splintered through his conciseness.  He screamed for him once more, stumbling in his run and cursing his inability to move faster.

He leapt the final feet landing on skidding paws between Blaine – who was already getting up to attack again – and Cooper with a warning growl full of teeth.

 _‘Kurt! Get back!’_ Blaine insisted even as Cooper narrowed angry blue eyes at him.

“You let your mate do all your fighting for you Blainey?” Cooper asked and Blaine’s hatred surged between them. Kurt snapped his teeth at him when he attempted to dart around him, the split second warning their bond as mates gave him his only advantage against Blaine’s speed.

‘ _Stop it!’_ he ordered. _‘He’s goading you, you idiot! You see how much stronger than you he is?!’_

Lina took advantage of the interference to scramble to her feet and rush to Cooper.

 _‘I’m not letting him get away with what he’s done!’_ Blaine thundered in reply attempting to move again and again meeting Kurt’s teeth.

 _‘You can’t do it alone! You need me and Blaine I need you to come back!’_ Kurt screamed in his thoughts and then letting the walls crack and tumble, the full force of how much he _needed_ Blaine to come through he pleaded, _‘Honey, please.’_

Blaine went still and for one blissful moment Kurt hoped. Untill…

“No, mi amato don’t do this. Stay with me. Please…” Kurt could hear Lina pleading behind him and Cooper’s angry growl.

“He’ll kill me! Don’t you get it?! We can never be a family so long as he’s around.”

‘ _A family?! You destroyed our family Cooper! You and dad, you DESTROYED it. You want to talk about family?!’_

“Shut up! You weren’t even supposed to be born!” Cooper roared. He grabbed Lina, shoving her violently aside and Kurt braced. But it was a gesture in vain because Cooper disappeared only to reappear directly in front of Kurt, back handing him with enough force to crack bone and Kurt saw stars. Blaine had Cooper’s arm between his teeth not a moment later. It looked to Kurt as he was scrambling to his feet that Blaine’s teeth had gone straight through it, but whether it was the strength of his bones or how quickly he healed (or likely some combination of both) Cooper was able to use the other hand to grab Blaine by the snout and pry his jaws open with a grunt and a roar.

Kurt had to make a decision. There was no talking either of them down. Cooper had spoken true. There was too much blood on his hands for Blaine to let him walk away and Cooper would never surrender his life willingly. Which in turn meant no matter who or how it hurt, Cooper Anderson was going to die that night. Pack Westerville couldn’t lose its Alpha on top of everything else and Kurt would never stand by and let someone take his mate from him. Not ever.

He thought of her again, the girl from his dream, the way she’d screamed for help, the way she’d reached. Being called daddy… and all that blood.

He snarled, embracing the swell of agony and the surge of heat in his head as he let the walls fall between him and Blaine. He was not afraid, either of the power or the rising of rage. It was theirs, to share just as everything else was.  If anything he finally found relief, for in that storm he found Blaine and for a moment the world fell away.

It was just them, exactly as they were. With all their holes and their jagged edges. Just them standing under each other’s stars.

 _‘We fight together?’_ Blaine asked, with the gratitude of a man who had thought himself alone in the universe only to discover a voice to match his own.

 _‘Until the end of all there is’._ Their truth, as it had always been.

 _‘And far beyond that’_. Kurt thought that Blaine would always appear to him just so in his dreams, soft and beautiful with stardust adorning his lashes.

Kurt pounced, aiming for Cooper’s exposed side. As it turned out vryloka blood was just as hot as any other and carried none of the vampire sting. The thunder rolled and the lightning cracked.

~*~

 _Lancelot and Gwyn defended the realm from atop a hill, their steps a dance_.

~*~

Kurt and Blaine, together, with the power of Excalibur were a sight to behold. They moved like shadows. Like two halves of the same whole. Cooper was stronger and faster than any single wolf alone but he could not match them both united as they were. Quickly the tide of the battle began to change, the blood that flowed his more often than it was theirs. Until there was no doubt in any observers eye that he was finally going to meet his end. It became certain when Wes and Adam, free at last, came to help. At no point did Cooper Anderson make an attempt to run. He swung, kicked, scratched and clawed into exhaustion, determined that should he die it would be torn limb from limb and nothing less.

And so it might have been if not for Lina.

He was surrounded by the four of them, a bloodthirsty pack with single minded purpose, teeth tearing on all ends when suddenly Ian’s voice went up in a horrified shout.

“No, Child!”

And then beneath Kurt’s teeth Cooper went suddenly still and cool as an ice sculpture.

And then just as quickly he erupted with a howl, tearing himself free of their teeth and disappearing in a swirl of smoke only to reform again outside their circle. He knelt in front of Lina a bloodied mess. He was so torn up it took Kurt a minute to realize that all of the blood soaking the ground was not his own.

He knew the instant Blaine realized it as well because the haze of rage began to drain from his head, Excalibur’s dizzying power finally giving way. Kurt slowly took in the scene and realized what Lina’s pale graying features, Jessie’s knife laying by her side, and the scent of blood heavy in the air could only mean.

_Oh no. No this couldn’t be happening._

Kurt and Blaine shifted on the same breath and the others followed their lead. He ignored the injuries that had not healed (something about vampire venom disrupted their natural healing abilities) but did take a moment to gape slightly at the sight of a long glistening sword in Blaine’s hand; but only a moment. Lina’s waning life force was too prevalent, a persistent itch. They rushed toward the dying woman only to have Cooper snatch her up and scream at them, voice raw with pain and thick with tears.

“Get away!” Sobbing he pressed his face into her shirt and groaned. “Lina. Lina, what have you done.”

Kurt already knew what she’d done. Her warmth was slipping away no matter how desperately he grasped at the bonds between them or how hard he pleaded.

 _No, no, no no nononoo…please, don’t. Please, Lina please._ So fast. She was slipping so fast.

As if to mock him the thread between them went cold. Just like that. There an instant and gone the next like water dripping through the cracks between ones fingers. And just Kurt stood there, staring at her still form, waiting for her chest to rise or fall. It never did.

“The only thing guaranteed to save you.” Ian was answering and Cooper looked up at him with hate filled eyes.

“Save me? What is left? What has she saved?!”

“Someone she loves you fool boy!” Ian shouted back and Kurt had never heard him sound so grieved. “Think boy. You were not born as you are, you were made.”

Kurt had no idea what that meant but it appeared to mean something to Cooper because he gasped and without further ado he stood and Kurt barely got his mouth open to shout for him to wait before Cooper had disappeared again, this time along with Lina.

“Wait!” He called again, whirling around as if Cooper might have reappeared behind them again. He had not but Kurt continued to shout into the night. “Wait! Wait!”

He tried to run after them, though it was a senseless action, but his legs gave out after only a few steps and he dropped like a stone.

Why was he crying? Hadn’t he known what he was asking when he’d _used_ her? Hadn’t she just proven him correct – the only thing that could derail Cooper Anderson’s plans was her involvement? She’d known what he had known and she had acted because he had _asked_ her to.

“Kurt, stop. It’s over, Baby it’s over.” Blaine’s arms were around him, soothing him like one would a distressed child. He didn’t know when that had happened. He was pretty sure this was what shock felt like: the bone deep cold and the chattering teeth thing. Because he should feel more – should be able to get up and do more – but all he could manage to do was sit there and stare at the others standing around looking strange and lost amidst the bodies littering the hill top.

He’d talked such a good game about being brave – about being ready for this – but all he wanted now was to sink into his alpha’s embrace and go to sleep (never wake up). He couldn’t do that… why couldn’t he just do that?

‘ _My Father…’_ he wanted to look. Tried to look, but he couldn’t find the strength to turn his head. Blaine was gesturing to one of the others and a moment later Chandler plopped down beside him, his warm hands coming to rest on Kurt’s naked thigh as he cuddled against him, giving the older beta’s chilled body more heat.

_‘He’s alive. Ian’s got him and Puck. Everything’s gonna be fine, and when we get back Kitty and the others are gonna be hella jealous that I got to see you and Blaine kick ass and they didn’t. So thanks for that by the way. And did I tell you? Adam and I are getting mated. I mean obviously but he finally knows about it. My mom is gonna flip. Can I take a month of mating leave? I think I deserve a month, being a hero and all…’_

Chandler continued to chatter and Kurt huffed a rusty laugh, startled by the flood of warmth and amusement growing in his chest. Guilty, because Chandler was alive and Lina wasn’t and he was _laughing_. He’d promised to protect her and that nothing bad would happen to her or Benito…

Alarm shot through him as he remembered too late, why he couldn’t afford to go into shock, now of all moments.

_‘Benito! He’s hiding in the car. He’s alone. I promised her he wouldn’t be alone!’_

 Blaine shushed him, rocking him back and forth, rubbing more heat into his arms.

“Okay. Okay Kurt, we’ll find him.” He looked over at Adam, communicating silently with the Alpha and Adam nodded back. Smythe offered to show Adam to the parking lot and Kurt could only wonder at that. He was glad though when Jeff narrowed his eyes and volunteered to accompany them. Sebastian rolled his eyes but didn’t argue.

When the group had set off Kurt closed his eyes. Tired down to the bone he let himself sink.

~*~

Adam was nervous leaving the Alpha and his mate for any period of time, especially with everyone injured, Kurt slipping into subshock, and three potential threats still alive on the hill. Nick Duval, no matter what bond he shared with Jeff or whatever he’d been before this life, was still a rogue (still a MacTere). The Changs had surrendered, offering their wrists in the Guild sanctioned version of the white flag, but it wouldn’t be the first time a leech had used such a rouse to get close enough to kill. But there was a cub out there alone, who had just had his bond with his mother severed. He would have to trust that no matter what else they were attending to Wes and Ian would let no harm come to their Alpha pair.

Sebastian led Adam and Jeff through the unfamiliar reserve. Blaine had only agreed to their insane request to come along because Ian had insisted on it. Blaine in turn had insisted that they be tested with the Wizard’s fire, which had revealed that their vows to loyally serve him had truth for the moment. And he wasn’t blind. He’d seen their persons change on the battlefield just like everyone else as magic had had been tossed about and the sky split with lightning.

And still, Adam didn’t trust their change of heart – no matter what the wizard’s fire had said – but he was at the very least grateful that Sebastian, having plotted with Cooper, knew something of the reserves layout or they might have been searching for hours. When they reached the right area it was easy to spot the lone car parked near the entrance to the path and the crumpled body lying next to it. Jeff reached her first and Adam recognized Mercedes Jones, who worked at the café in town, though he had no idea what she was doing there.

“She’s breathing, but she’s been bitt pretty bad. Looks lycan,” Jeff reported and the three men shared looks of confusion and growing worry. They hadn’t entered through this way on their way in. Had Cooper done this?

The boy, supposedly hiding in the car was nowhere to be seen. Dread creeping in his heart Adam did his best to sort through the lingering scents of blood and bodies clinging to their skins and find some trace of the child, as did the others, but it was as if he had never been there at all. The frustrating thing was if he had that charm that Ian had given Lina then it wouldn’t matter. He could be right in front of their eyes and they’d never be the wiser.

“Benito?” Adam called softly. If he was a terrified cub who had just lost his mother he wasn’t sure if he would come out of hiding either. And knowing Lina she had probably told him to come out for Kurt or Blaine and no one else. He still tried. “Are you here love?”

There was no answer. Adam was wondering how in the world he was going to tell his Alpha and his Matca that the boy was lost when Sebastian, a few yards ahead and near the tree line, called out.

“I found a scent!”

Adam glanced back at Jeff who was still kneeling beside Mercedes.

“Stay with her” he instructed and the protégé nodded. Turning he followed Sebastian into the wood. The scent was not of Benito’s but it was familiar, tickling at Adam’s pack senses with warm honeyed notes.

“Smells like Anderson.” Sebastian grunted, echoing Adam’s thoughts.

“Cooper?” He suggested and Smythe shrugged.

“Might be. He smelled different when he was doing the leech thing. I never even knew he was lycan, let alone an Anderson.”

Adam was about to reply when they reached another break in the trees, revealing that the path led to a stone fountain amidst a public seating area. There was a black wolf sitting vigil in front of the fountain. He was watching the wood as if waiting for them. Indeed the moment he spotted them he turned his head toward the fountain and stared at it for a long moment before getting up and darting away. He melted into the night like a shadow gone too quickly to chase.

“Who the hell was that?” Sebastian asked first and this time Adam was the one to shrug. He had no idea. The unknown wolf had been a ways off but still not anyone that Adam had immediately recognized. It had been years since Adam had seen Cooper Anderson’s wolf form however, so he supposed it was possible that it had been him as the scent seemed to suggest. It made more sense than anything else.

Either way both men were cautious as they approached the fountain. But nothing came out of the dark and they found no evidence of anybody else in the vicinity. All thoughts of the strange wolf they’d encountered fled Adams mind as they reached the fountain and looked within. Laying upon a nest of dried leaves was Benito. The small cub was curled up, fast asleep beneath the stars as if that night were like any other, his ears twitching minutely as he dreamed. The charm Ian had given Lina was nowhere to be seen.

Poor kid, Adam thought as he gently picked up the sleeping child. He brushed away a soft black feather clinging to the boys coat and cradled him close. For the first time that evening he allowed himself to feel the first wave of grief. Lina had been a wonderful woman and a wonderful mother. Poor boy.

He’d open his eyes in the morning and his whole world would be changed. But then again it had changed for all of them.

_~*~*~_

_Kurt did not remember how long he had been in the meadow with the low rolling hills, only that at one time he had been filled with so much pain and misery that he’d wanted to die and then he had closed his eyes. When he had opened them he was there in the meadow with he who was him and yet not him. He had seemed aware of Kurt’s arrival even though they were one in body, for he’d stopped in his task (cleaning a shirt of chain mail) to smile secretly to himself and murmured a quiet hello. Kurt had wondered who he was and the man had answered._

_“Blaine calls us mângâiere here, though we have gone by other names. Kurt is not my favorite.” The man wrinkled his freckled nose. “It’s rather abrupt don’t you think?”_

_Kurt liked his name (their name?) just fine. He liked it better than Gwyn which was mostly a girl’s name these days. The man (or perhaps it was they) laughed._

_“Aye then. For now we shall be Kurt. Gwyn had his day.”_

_And they had gone on like that, for it was warm and pleasant in the meadow and time seemed to lazily trickle by. They spent their time however Gwyn (for Kurt was sure that had been his name once) seemed to feel like it, and whatever Gwyn wanted just seemed to appear whenever he wanted it, whether it was food to hunt or armor to clean. Sometimes a gray war horse would wander into the meadow and Gwyn always seemed delighted to see it appear. They would go for long rides and the beautiful man would sing old songs and tell even older stories. It was easy to lose track of time there, for it didn’t seem to mean anything._

_Clearly Kurt had died, and if not heaven then this was some sort of afterlife._

_“Perhaps,” Gwyn murmured with a shrug as he concentrated on shaping the wood of what was to be a long bow. “Though you are very much alive elsewhere.”_

_Kurt wondered where ‘here’ was._

_Gwyn shrugged again._

_“I do not know. But it is nice. Not quite the hell I was promised by the priests, but I can’t say I am disappointed by that.”_

_After a time, though Kurt could not say how long (it could have been days or years) it occurred to him to wonder what would happen to his body if he stayed there._

_“Well I imagine you will die,” Gwyn answered frankly as he reached for the low hanging fruit on what appeared to be an apple and pear tree all in one. “What makes you alive in soul does not a body feed. Not in a physical sense I daresay.”_

_Gwyn’s brow wrinkled, his hands once again faltering in their work._

_So Kurt was alive, but somewhere out there his body was just wasting away?_

_“You’re very worried.” Gwyn stated mater of factly. “But you needn’t be. Blaine will not let us die so foolishly. Nor will I for that matter. Why do you think I am here?”_

_Kurt had no idea. They barely knew each other and Gwyn was some sort of celestial spirit. How was Kurt supposed to reason why he did anything?_

_The meadow filled with laughter as Gwyn threw back his head. Well it was good to know he at least managed to amuse himself._

_“Aye, Kurt Hummel you’ll do nicely.” Gwyn chuckled, picking up the basket of fruit he’d collected. “A bit of rest with me and you will be right as rain. You’ll see.”_

_Kurt wondered what he was waiting for when Gwyn just stood there but he did not have to wait long as at that moment there came the sound of a whinny and the clopping of hooves as the grey horse returned, cantering toward them over the rolling hills._

_“About time you showed up Athelus,” Gwyn scolded the horse. “We could have missed him!”_

_Who? In all his time there (days, weeks, years…) they had never encountered another soul besides the horse. If this place was the eternal home for his soul, not much seemed to shake it and even fewer beings seemed to leave a lasting mark._

_“Aye that is the way of it. We are staunch that way, though there are indeed others who can reach us here… but that is for you to discover someday long from now. It does no good to dwell in these realms. Not while yet living.”_

_If he was truly wasting away on the outside, Kurt had to concede the point, though he was curious to know who else dwelled in this realm. Who was tied so deeply to them that their souls could touch beyond death and life itself?_

_Gwyn smiled._

_“Here comes one of them now.”_

_Kurt had not noticed them mounting or Athelus’ long strides across the seemingly endless meadow, but he often lost time in this place._

_A man stood atop the hill in wait. Unlike Gwyn, who was clothed in a simple blue tunic and finely sewn trousers the man was dressed as finely as a lord, a richly embroidered cloak about his shoulders and a thin circulate of gold pinning down the waves of hair so dark a brown it was nearly black. A handsome prince, Kurt thought with a chuckle. Gwyn had his very own prince charming in the afterlife?_

_“Oh hush. He appears the way we wish. I am sure I look something ridiculous in his eyes. Would you believe that he favored all those ridiculous gowns we used to wear? I’d have burned the lot of them had Arthur allowed me but Lancelot, the idiot, would probably have wept. I never knew what to make of it, I mean clearly he preferred that I was male and yet the damn gowns. Did you know your Blaine mistook me for a woman for years? Oh aye, it took him years to see past them.”_

_In all their time together Kurt had never heard him chatter so, or seen him so nervously attend to his appearance. They were flushed, their heart pounding as they dismounted from the back of the horse and all but sprinted to meet the man that Kurt could now see was Blaine, and not Blaine. Love, as he had always been to them._

_He threw himself into his lovers waiting arms and Lancelot caught him, holding tight, spinning him around indeed as if he had a gown to flourish about his legs and Gwyn laughed gaily._

_“There you are.” Lancelot whispered tenderly once he had set him down. Kurt had never seen someone look at another with such adoration as Lancelot looked at them, gently pushing the fly away tendrils of their hair away from their eyes._

_“I’ve been looking for you forever,” he teased, gently tugging on a strand of their hair._

_And Kurt knew that he was speaking to him. That Blaine was looking for him, needed him, and Kurt had been gone too long._

_“I know. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. But my heart is very heavy Lancelot.”_

_“I know,” Lancelot echoed sadly, thumbs stroking gently at their side._

_“Is the world still so dark?”_

_“Aye. But not as much as it was.”_

_“Have I lost our child? Lancelot… what if Arthur is lost to us now?”_

_Pain lanced through Kurt’s heart and he wanted to flinch away, be anywhere else but there, but Lancelot’s arms were safe and they held him tightly._

_“I don’t know. But I would love you just the same.Arthur will come in his own time. There is someone else who needs you now.”_

_“The boy.”_

_“You made his mother a promise.”_

_“Aye. That he should always be loved. That he should not grow up in fear. That he should be everything that they were not allowed to be. A heavy yoke for a small boy.”_

_“He won’t be alone. He shall have us. And we finally have each other.”_

Yes they did. And they would always. And that was enough, Kurt decided, to make the world bright.

 _“Will you hold me while I wake?”_ He asked, leaning into loves warm embrace.

_“Far beyond that.”_

_~*~*~_

Kurt Anderson, matcă of Pack Westerville opened his eyes.

 

The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You made it. :) I will save my thank yous and my general sappiness for after I post the epilogue but I just wanted to say it has been a pleasure, and that I know a lot is still unanswered and this ending raises far more than it resolves. That's the trouble with it being shaped for a series I'm afraid. I did go back and shall I say include certain details that I was originally going to keep tighter to my chest. But just in case I am unable to write the other stories in this verse like I plan to, I think you could likely form a solid guess as to what would have happened. My gift to you guys.


	40. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The wrap up.

“Are you ready?” Kurt asked, and the small cub sitting at his feet blinked back at him with wary blue eyes. Benito’s small puppy body squirmed with anxiety but he made no reply. He hadn’t spoken since the morning he’d woken, cried for his mother and had been told she was not coming back to him. Kurt lifted him off the floor and into his lap, once again feeling a rush of gladness that the boy was alive, and then feeling selfish for that same gladness. Benito was only his constant shadow now because of Kurt’s poor choices in the first place. He was only safe because some stranger had stepped in.

Kurt had told Blaine about the wolf he’d seen, the one who had stopped Aurel from preventing Cooper freeing him before Blaine could arrive, but nobody had any idea who the wolf could have been. Adam had thought it was Cooper but Kurt doubted Cooper’s powers included being two places at once.

Ian had checked him for enchantment but other than the sleep which had been forced upon him that night the boy was magic free and any muteness on his part must stem from a desire not to speak. Kurt could understand why that might be. He hadn’t been talkative since he woke up either. Both of them safe now, but not unscarred.

When Kurt had finally woken from subsleep he’d learned that he’d been locked in subspace for going on eight days. He’d been in the infirmary, though it still bore the signs of the recent attack, because while unconscious his only source of nourishment had been an IV drip. He’d learned that his step mother Carol had all but bullied her way onto Quinn’s staff, personally supervising all of the omega nurses with a critical eye.

“She’s quite something,” Quinn had told him with a small smile, but Kurt had been unable to muster one for her in return.

While he had slept Blaine had not left his side. The Alpha had been his first sight upon opening his eyes and he’d been a sorry one at that. Kurt could tell just by looking at him that he hadn’t let Quinn or any of the other infirmary staff really see to his injuries. There were deep circle bruises around his eyes that betrayed his level of exhaustion.

But he’d lit up when Kurt’s sluggish movement had jarred him from his fitful snooze in the armchair beside Kurt’s bed, and they’d embraced and cried together, and once again Kurt had leaned on him for strength even though Blaine looked like a stiff wind would blow him over.

He’d eventually been moved back to the Alpha’s chambers and was slowly getting his own strength back but he did not feel up to the multitude of visitors he’d had in the days since he’d woken. Benito was a constant presence as the only time Kurt felt comfortable with him out of sight was when Blaine insisted on taking him. He’d seen his family because nothing in truth could keep them away. That had been hard. Especially in regards to Finn. After witnessing Westerville turn into a paranormal war ground Burt was of the staunch opinion that Kurt needed to get as far away from it as he possibly could. Kurt didn’t even necessarily disagree.

His life since coming here felt like nothing but pain and turmoil in retrospect. A bleak prospect for the future. But the truth was he knew it wasn’t true, that he had found plenty of good here as well (possibly the best thing he would ever have) and he was far too changed by it all to go back now. Finn had yelled at him. Called him crazy for wanting to live again what he’d been through and that’s when Carol had been forced to tell him that he had his own choices to make.

Between the choice to stay in Westerville or go back with Rachel and Puck to Columbus for training in a pack full of strangers he’d chosen to stay, but not at all happily. He’d said some things to Carol that Kurt knew he’d regret but the wounds were to fresh for him to see it. Though he sincerely hoped none of the omegas would gossip about having heard their Matca’s brother say that he would rather be dead than a monster. It would not make his transition into the pack any easier.

Finn was pouting but Burt still visited with Kurt every morning, and following him Blaine would come back freshly showered to share a late breakfast with him and then Chandler would hobble over from his own room (though he should not have been on his feet after surgery) and Blaine would retreat because Chandler could talk the ear off of anyone (Kurt suspected he did it on purpose, just to be sure Blaine didn’t spend every minute of the day at Kurt’s bedside).

He appreciated it, appreciated Chandler’s attempts at distraction and cheerfulness, but he would rather have been alone. Jeff came a few times, as did Adam, and Wes but they all seemed to sense that he did not want company. And Wes had his own grief to deal with. With the chaos during the attack on the infirmary and Wes’ necessary withdrawal from her side Emma had slipped away.

Kurt did not know how close they had gotten to mating. Wes had always been so careful, so hyper aware of his duty as Pack Beta, Blaine’s needs, and his unique ability to fill them. He’d held back from mating for so long that perhaps now it was a bit of a blessing. His spirit had not attempted to follow her into death, something that would have broken Blaine’s heart in a way that Kurt could not repair, but Kurt could imagine that carried with it its own sort of tragedy. He’d loved her but not apparently enough. And everyone would know.

Kurt had loved Lina, but not apparently enough to save her. Not enough to preserve her life over his own. Not enough where it had counted.

He’d never loved the idea of being pregnant and now…

He looked down lifting his shirt to gaze upon the long thin scar across his belly. A gruesome sort of smile forever carved into his flesh. Healed as much as his body was going to where magic had gotten involved.

His hands began to tremble and he let the shirt drop.

In the chair next to him Blaine shifted, laying a hand on his thigh.

“Kurt?” Blaine inquired and the beta winced.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s ugly.”

Blaine did not answer, though his feelings on the subject were easily readable over the bond. He did not lie Kurt to feel badly about himself (or about anything for that matter). But he didn’t lecture and for that Kurt was grateful. He simply waited breathing in time with Kurt whose breathes began to shudder as the tears welled unbidden and he thought again of the uncertain future.

“How do you live with yourself after?” He finally croaked on a dry whisper “Ian accused me once of not being ready to lead and he was right. You make choices like the one I did every day, but how do you live with it?”

Blaine put an arm around him and rubbed his back.

“You do the best with what you have.” He eventually answered. “You do the best you can, and remember that the people fighting beside you are fighting for the same things you are. That they’ve made conscious choices and you have to respect those choices.”

“Even if that choice is suicide?!” He demanded, balling his fists. He did his best to contain the emotion within him, ever conscious of the small cub he was caring for. Benito curled up closer to his stomach, drawn by the heat and watched them both solemnly.

“If Lina chose to risk her life to save yours its because she thought you were worth the risk Kurt,” Blaine murmured with a firmness Kurt hadn’t heard him use in a while. Everything had been gentle strokes and tip toes for days. “She knew what needed to happen and how it would affect her when she did it. Aurel would have killed her given half a chance and she couldn’t let us kill Cooper any more than you could let Cooper kill me. So she did what she knew would save him because to her… to her he was worth that.”

Though it was obvious the idea that Cooper Anderson was worth someone sacrificing their life boggled Blaine, he spoke truth. Kurt had asked Lina to manipulate her bond with Blaine’s brother and they’d both known it would have consequences, even if they had only been as simple as Lina losing the barriers she’d put between herself and all she felt for someone she could not rely on not to hurt her.

She’d built those walls herself and she’d torn them down herself. At his request yes, but more so because necessity had demanded it. Because she had been willing, and far braver than anyone had ever given her credit for. Kurt stroked Benito’s soft black fur and thought that if the cub grew to be half the person his mother had been that all of Kurt’s promises would be kept. He couldn’t prevent people talking about Cooper but he would tell Benito about Lina every day if he had to, so that he would know what he was truly made of.

He sighed, letting some of the tension in his shoulders ease and Blaine squeezed his hand.

They were waiting behind the closed curtain in Quinn’s office.

The new grin Jesse St James had carved across Kurt’s belly kept taunting him, the prevailing question on everyone’s mind unanswerable so damn soon after his heat. Quinn and Carole had tried to prepare him for the worst. Such a deep wound. So soon after he’d ovulated. So many days in subsleep. No way to tell until his body healed.

He shouldn’t get his hopes up in other words.

He’d cried the morning he’d woken up and found that once again his body had reverted to its natural state, familiar genitals and all. Carole had held him while Quinn reminded him that it didn’t necessarily mean anything.  Many carrying males regained their non-carrying form until closer to giving birth. More didn’t but it didn’t change the fact that many did.

He felt ashamed for crying the way he had. Guilty. Because he’d never wanted it. Hell Carole and Burt were taking the news that he could possibly be having a baby better than Kurt had, poor Chandler had been forced to go undergo the best surgery that Quinn could provide and was such a mess internally that it was doubtful he would ever carry – he who’d been dreaming about it for most his life – and they were the ones comforting Kurt as he cried over the potential loss of what he’d never wanted in the first place.

 _‘Uh excuse me?!’_ Chandler’s indignant voice filled his head and Kurt started. _‘You were not the one who did this, and frankly I’m insulted that you think I’m letting some grubby handed leech rob me of my happiness. So thanks for the invitation to the pity parade by I can not make it.’_

 _‘Chandler!’_ Jeff’s exasperated voice followed and Kurt sniffed eyes widening when he realized that apparently not only were the two protégés camped outside their door but their alpha-masters along with them.

 _‘Way to blow our cover, Champ,’_ Adam sighed with a ripple of amusement and Kurt could feel Chandler’s discontent.

_‘Champ? That makes me sound like I’m six, and you a dirty old man. Can’t we have sexy petnames like-’_

_‘Buddy? Squirt? Little fella?’_

_‘Shut up Crawford. Your participation card has been revoked. I choose our pet names from here on out.’_

Blaine rolled his eyes to the ceiling and called out audibly, “What the hell are you guys doing?”

At that moment the curtain swished open and all four men poked their heads into the office, some more sheepishly than others.

“Chandler here suggested we come for moral support,” Adam began to explain.

“Which is a great idea!” the blond beta insisted.

“But I said you guys would want your privacy at a moment like this,” Wes began.

“And I said that regardless, you shouldn’t be alone at a time like this so here we are.” Jeff jumped in, and as an afterthought he said, “oh and Nick wanted to come but Quinn won’t let him near the infirmary. Sebastian huffed and puffed and generally made it sound like he’d rather be doing anything else, but if Quinn had let him he might have come. Hard to tell with that guy.”

Blaine’s expression darkened and Kurt knew that he was just fine with the former rogues ban from the infirmary. Kurt himself was rather glad they hadn’t come, he was overwhelmed enough as it was.

Chandler, seemingly oblivious, plopped himself at Kurt’s feet and wiggled his bum until he was pressed back against the older beta’s legs, like he was settling in for story time and Kurt couldn’t help a smile.

‘ _Are you okay_ ’ Blaine asked him privately and Kurt knew that if he wanted it Blaine would have shooed them all away, as well intending as they were. But having them there felt nice in its own way. Like water offered when you’d been working so hard you hadn’t even noticed your thirst.

He nodded and Blaine squeezed his hand again.

At that moment footsteps came toward the room and everyone tensed expectantly as Quinn came striding back in. She looked startled at the room’s unexpected crowd but not overly surprised by it. Sha had a manilla envelope in her hands, undoubtedly the results of the numerous tests and scans she’d done on him and Kurt’s breath caught in his chest.

“Do you want to hear this now…?” Quinn looked directly at him, glancing pointedly toward the others.

“Yeah…” Kurt’s voice cracked and he cleared it. “Yeah we’d like to know.” He was suddenly very glad that all of them were there, bolstered by their heat and the smell of home that the brought with them.

Quinn slowly extended the envelope with a smile.

“Well then… congratulations. It looks as if the two of you are going to be fathers.”

The room burst into a jubilant cheer and Kurt sagged in relief. Blaine’s unhidden joy was radiating at him as the alpha hugged him close grinning into his skin as he pressed soft kisses against his cheek.

_‘See. It’s alright. Everything’s going to be alright.’_

Benito was dancing on Kurt’s lap, made excitable by the jubilation in the room. Blaine was there with him, alive and well, and their family was growing.

For the first time Kurt could believe it was true. Everything was going to be alright in the end, so long as they had this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this fic (read novel). From the bottom of my heart I can only thank you for sticking with me through the literal YEARS this has taken. You have all been a precious part of a meaningful journey for me.  
> With all my love  
> -Meg
> 
> This work is part of a series of four stories that, all going well, I intend to complete. To keep track of the series progress you can follow me on Tumblr (triddlegrl) and periodically follow the tag name Matcă.


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